


The Ways They Haunt Us Still

by sabrina



Series: They Haunt Us Still [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Blending, Discussion of a fair number of your favorite Legends characters, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Like Jacen and Jaina and Tahiri and all the Jedi, Mother-Son Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, Parent-Child Relationship, Sorry I'll never be sorry about that, The Skywalker/Solo family puts the fun in dysfunctional, Unapologetically adding more Solo kids to the TFA universe, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-25 16:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6201994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrina/pseuds/sabrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anakin Solo wakes up after Myrkr in a galaxy that doesn't recognize him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Everything hurts_. 

It was his first conscious thought before he opened his eyes to what appeared to be a standard med bay. It was a med bay with machinery and technology and with the sort of bright cleanliness and spotless anaesthetic appeal that New Republic med bays somehow managed to always seemed to aspire to. His eyes floated open for a moment, aware of the pain, of the low, unintelligible conversations of medical droids and personnel, and machinery… machinery… somewhere between wanting to pull himself awake, a frantic check for his siblings, for Tahiri, his team, but even with the small rush of adrenaline that followed the noise of machines - something he hadn't heard for days… or was it longer? - his eyes protested, too heavy for him to fight even with the Force. . 

And so he didn't for a while longer. He dozed again into a half conscious state that wasn't truly restful. It felt as if it should have been. Surrounded as he was by water, floating on his back, looking up at the bluest sky he'd seen in a really long time it should have felt peaceful and maybe would have if he hadn't kept sinking under, air short and the desperate feeling of fighting to stay on the surface. 

During one of these fits he opened his eyes, limbs feeling heavy and weighted down and he could hear people talking in words too indistinct to make out. 

"Tahiri…? Mom, where's my mom?" 

He couldn't have told you the time that passed between that question and the next, only that he slept again, and when he awoke the question was not one he asked but rather was one asked of him: "Do you know where you are?"

Anakin Solo had to work to focus on the questioner. It was a medical droid at once familiar and yet just slightly off, which left him slightly unsettled despite the fact that the droid told him two things without speaking at all, one of which, at least, was good. If he was being cared for by a droid, he was no longer in Yuuzhan Vong territory. That it was a medical droid - well, the dreams he'd been fighting likely closely resembled reality. 

This left the question. Anakin tried his voice and found that it would work: "A New Republic ship?" But that couldn't be right exactly. This wasn't a ship, or if it was, then he was having a harder time focusing than he thought. "No, a New Republic base of some sort? Or a Jedi base... Where's Tahiri? Did Jace and Jaina make it out? Are my parents here?"

The droid seemed to consider the response, the tilt to its head almost comical, but without any real indication about whether or not his responses were accurate. Instead of this, the droid offered the conclusion that Anakin should stay put and he would send someone in. It was the sort of conclusion that Anakin would have smacked the droid for, but that would have meant that he was able to move in the first place which, even as he tried to pull on the Force, he was struggling to manage. It was the sort of conclusion that would have been obvious to anyone who looked at him. He wasn't moving anywhere: Not the way his limbs still felt: Not without a stronger grasp of the force around him, which he was struggling to grasp onto and hold - as if he were too tired and maybe a little drunk besides. 

It felt like forever that he lay there, but when he was finally rejoined it was a human woman with hair streaked with grey and golden skin who entered and came over to him. "It's good to see you awake," she said kindly. "We were beginning to wonder if you would do so. Can you tell me your name? The date?"

"My name is Anakin Solo," words worked, and his name he was certain of. "The date is … Well I can tell you what the date I last remember was." It was the date they'd left for Myrkr. "I don't know how long I have been here." His throat hurt when he swallowed, but that couldn't be avoided. "No one has told me anything about the rest of my team. Can you tell me what happened to them? Are my parents here?"

"Who are your parents?" 

The wary look on the woman's face caught Anakin's attention and he tried to push out into the Force to catch her sense, but all he could get was wary, and his ability to command the Force at the moment seemed to be weak. A weakness made no better by Anakin's surprise at the question she asked. Where was he that his name had absolutely no impact on her? It wasn't that Anakin was arrogant enough to assume that the entire galaxy knew a not quite seventeen year old Jedi, but there were a large number of planets in the New Republic, and it had been a long time since he'd met anyone who didn't know his name - the last one at least if not the first. 

"Leia Organa Solo," he felt as if his words sounded lost, not quite right on his tongue. "The former Chief of State. My father is…"

"Han Solo," the woman's eyes had widened slightly, but her expression had quickly controlled itself, and the suggestion was given with a fair amount of confidence.

_What the kriff was going on here?_

"Where am I?" And Anakin used every ounce of his energy to make the suggestion that she responded to the question as strong as he could while the Force felt so elusive to him. . 

"A Resistance base in the Lothal system. You need to rest," the woman added. "I'll see if I can find your mother." 

Like the slight unfamiliarity of the droid before her, something in the medical officer's tone made Anakin feel slightly discomfited as did the term 'Resistance base'. Then again, they were resisting the Yuuzhan Vong, the woman seemed to know his mother. He laid his head back and allowed his eyes to close as he leaned back against the mattress. 

It was only after she was gone that he realized neither droid not human officer had answered his question about his team. A chill rushed over him as he thought about Tahiri and his siblings and the remaining Jedi he'd led through what had felt like an actual living hell. As he reached out he couldn't feel them - and that was perhaps the worst of it. At best it felt like he could hope that just meant they weren't in any pain and maybe were not nearby. Tears found their way hot to the corner of his eyes and Anakin found enough strength to lift an arm to cover his face as he closed his eyes against the tears and the worry, still tired enough that he was asleep again before his sleeve could dampen. 

When he woke again he felt stronger. It wasn't as difficult to move his limbs as it had been and when a droid brought him food Anakin was pleased to see he could eat almost all of it by himself. It wasn't amazing fare, but as best he could tell it wasn't rations and protein bars or reconstituted things - or at least if it was, it was the latter, and it had been messed with a little beyond just the basic level. Anakin didn't quite know how long it had been since he'd had something that wasn't one of these things. Before Myrkr, definitely and even before that, probably. He'd been on ships for ages before that with Tahiri and Booster and the other Jedi kids and as cool as Booster's red star destroyer might look, it had the same ship's fare. Then again - he wasn't on a ship. 

It was as he was finishing that the door opened and Anakin raised his eyes up to see a familiar form walking through the door. 

"Mom," he breathed with relief and the sudden need to try to get out of bed and to hug her. He had no idea the last time he had hugged her. Again, before Myrkr but maybe before that. Everything had been so hectic. His feet were tangled in the blankets and despite the food he'd eaten, he was still weak and uncertain and he realized as he sat up and put one foot over the edge of the bed that there was a good chance he was going to fall over if he stood up. 

"Stay seated. You aren't yet fully healed," Leia spoke gently and she was by his side with a hand on his shoulder, but just like everything else there was something wrong - the kindness felt off. 

Anakin raised his eyes to look up at her. She looked like his mother. Older maybe? Perhaps a bit sadder. But he could see no recognition in her eyes and the realisation that she was staring at him like she might have a New Republic pilot or one of her favoured political colleagues ruthlessly pressed the air from his chest. 

"They said you said your name was Anakin Solo? That you were asking for your parents, Han and Leia?"

Anakin pulled air into his lungs purposefully, pushing a breath out and trying it again. He had heard the tone in Leia's voice hundreds of times in his life. He recognised it without any difficulty but it was incredibly off-putting to have it directed towards him. This was the tone Leia used in meetings or with political allies or even those that might be opponents. It was the tone that was kind and open, listening, but giving nothing away. It held all of her emotions close, and it kept those for later where they would bubble out, either in the meeting itself if it came to that, or to Han while the kids largely ignored the conversation doing their own thing. 

"My name _is_ Anakin Solo," he said, an edge of the exhaustion and confusion he was feeling creeping into his own tone as his brows furrowed. He stayed seated but pulled his gaze up to meet the woman who looked like his mom. Looked like, and even felt like in the Force, but in a way that was slightly off. Anakin drew on the Force more steadily and found that he could find it easier than before. So he reached out, trying to find something of his Mom in the woman in front of him, but he hit something - a wall of some sort - and she flinched. 

"You're a Jedi." 

The words held a cool edge to them, wary even, and Anakin frowned the answer more apparent than he wanted for it to be: "You don't know who I am." 

He had hoped for some pushback against this statement. A 'no don't be absurd, Anakin, of course I know you', but there wasn't any and nothing in all of his training had prepared him for this - waking up after he was sure he was dead in a place where no one seemed to answer his questions and his mother didn't know him. He took a breath in, then out, using the methodical motion to help still the racing panic that threatened to bubble up and explode. Breathing didn't hurt as much as it had, and spoke again. His voice wasn't as calm as he would have liked, but somehow he held onto the Force and continued. 

"Nobody has answered any of my questions about my team, or how I got from Myrkr to Lothal, or what this Resistance base is, or- Jacen and Jaina? I can't feel them in the Force, I can't feel Tahiri either. If I've died then I was kinda hoping the whole trying to save the galaxy thing would have ended me somewhere except New Republic medbay purgatory," this last came out with a wave of his hand and he frowned, his blue eyes turning a little icy. "If you're going to give me your cool 'I'm sussing out the situation' tone could you maybe give me some answers with that too?"

For a moment Leia said nothing and then her lips twitched. "Well, you've convinced me you're Han's anyway." 

Anakin just stared at her. He was too tired, and still too unable to really pull strength from the Force to put up with vague responses. "I just don't understand what the kriff is going on." 

"I think that makes two of us," Leia said mildly. "How old are you anyway?" 

"Seventeen," Anakin responded automatically. He had no idea if it was true, but he had been nearly there and at this point he felt as if he had been sleeping for months. He moved past her question to persist in his own with a determination that could easily match his mother's: "What happened to my team?" 

"Most of this I can't answer," Leia responded, calmly, but not without some sympathy. "I can tell you how you got here. You were found by one of our pilots in his shuttle after he left the Myrkr system about a week ago. He has no idea how you got there, only that he thought you would die before you made it back to base. He and his droid kept you alive but most of our medical team weren't certain you could pull out of it -- you were pretty badly beaten up." Leia hesitated, and for the first time since she'd entered the room Anakin could sense some uncertainty as her brown eyes flicked over him. "What were you doing on Myrkr?" 

"Trying to kill the voxyn the Yuuzhan Vong were creating there," Anakin replied, the confusion not lessening. 

If it hadn't been that he could feel her in the Force, Anakin would have suspected a trick, some sort of Yuuzhan Vong masquer, but there was none of that. She might be a clone, he supposed - his Uncle had frequently said that clones felt different in the Force, but that didn't feel right either. But his mother couldn't be unaware of his mission any more than she was unaware of him. And nothing about what he had said had registered with her. 

"Are the Yuuzhan Vong locals?" Leia asked him. "It is not a culture I'm aware of." 

"Locals?" Anakin was incredulous as permanent bewilderment sunk in. "You honestly don't know who I am?" 

Leia was quiet, and though her words were calm, Anakin was pretty certain there was a good deal of emotion being held underneath the surface. "I didn't have a child named Anakin." 

The tense was noted, and Anakin's brows furrowed. Uncertainly he looked over at her. "I'm not lying about who my parents are." 

"I believe you, but I don't know of any other Leia Organa in this galaxy, certainly none other who was married to Han Solo, and I have no son named Anakin. To be honest, I have a difficult time believing I would have given any child that name." She crossed her arms over her chest. "You need to strengthen, and when you have rested we'll see if we can't get to the bottom of this." 

Anakin nodded automatically, feeling as if what she said required a response that he wasn't certain about how to make. Everything was running through his head and making no sense at all. But with the pain receding and the Force creeping back in he could meditate and find some truth there. 

"You didn't pick anyone else up around Myrkr?" He asked and his voice sounded small in his ears. 

Leia watched him for a moment before shaking her head: "I'm sorry, but no. Just you." 

Anakin swallowed. Whatever had happened to him, and whatever was going on, he would just have to believe that his siblings, Tahiri, all of his friends and fellow Jedi had made it out alive. And in one way his mother who was not his mother was right - he needed to be strong enough to walk on two legs to figure this out. 

"Right." He stared at the final bits of whatever pudding had been in the cup, and he realized he didn't want it. "Shall I - ask for you again?" 

"When you're ready, they'll bring you to me," Leia said, and she reached out, this time to tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry that I can't give you more. Rest, and we'll figure this out when you're stronger."


	2. Chapter 2

When his mother had said they would bring him to her when he was ready, Anakin guessed she hadn't been expecting this meeting to happen the next day. But the ability to utilize the Force more confidently had started as a trickle that had allowed meditation, and from there a healing trance had been simple. And when he woke the next day it was with less pain everywhere in his body, more strength in his limbs, and a renewed sense of hope about everything that he was facing. However, despite the fact that his mother that wasn't his mother seemed to have figured out that he was a Jedi, the medical workers seemed surprised when the next day he woke up, swung his feet over the side of the bed and asked to see Leia Organa Solo again. 

So they brought him trousers and a shirt, and Anakin dressed slowly in clothes that were about the right size, and felt so familiar. Corellian style trousers, an ivory colored shirt, and a simple belt. He ran his fingers through his hair, checking the small mirror in the tiny refresher attached to the room. He needed to shave, a realization that made him run his hand over the darker hairs on his upper lip. Nowhere to be seen was his lightsaber and Anakin frowned. Had it not been with him - on him? Maybe he'd dropped it? Although considering that he still had no idea how he'd gotten on a shuttle in the Myrkr system when the last thing he remembered was - 

His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar looking droid and Anakin turned around a lopsided grin crossing his features. "Threepio." 

"I'm sorry sir, do I know you?" 

"No," his grin faded a little. Once again part of him had hoped that Threepio might jump right in somehow recognizing him in those ancient and non-wiped memory banks where his mother, and no one else seemed to have been able to do so. But he hadn't and so Anakin suppressed a sigh. "No, you wouldn't - you just remind me of home a bit." 

"I hope in the very best of ways, young sir," Threepio said amiably. "The General is waiting for you, follow me." 

Anakin followed Threepio as he shuffled down the corridors, past people in uniform, other droids - it felt very much like a New Republic military base, but then, like the medical droid - he would pass something that wasn't quite what he was expected. It gave him a feeling of otherworldliness, like maybe he had stepped through a looking glass and everything was reflected backwards. The room where Threepio brought him was clearly a smaller command room and as he stepped through the door he brought his shoulders up into the posture of a Jedi despite the uncertainty of the situation. 

"General Organa, Master Solo for you." 

"Thank you, Threepio." 

Anakin stepped in and scanned the room for other familiar faces. A man in a pilot's jumpsuit, orange just like Jaina's Rogue Squadron jumpsuit at home. A Bothan, a captain by the looks of him, a younger female officer, and then "Admiral Ackbar?" 

The Mon Calamari Admiral looked over at Anakin and nodded somberly. "You know me as well then?" 

"Yeah," Anakin blinked. "But I'm guessing you don't know me either." 

Leia and the Admiral exchanged looks and then she stepped forward. "We weren't expecting you quite so soon, but I'm glad to see you up and about regardless. You know the Admiral apparently, this is Poe Dameron - he's the pilot who found you." 

Anakin turned and extended a hand to his apparent savior. Dameron was someone who didn't look familiar, even if Anakin knew the type immediately from his stance and his eyes. Anakin's lips came up in a half-grin and he nodded. "It's good to meet you." 

"It's good to see you walking," Poe returned the smile along with a firm handshake. "Wasn't certain I was going to get you back in time to make that a reality." 

"I'm glad you did," Anakin shrugged easily, and turned back towards Leia. He still got the feeling that she didn't entirely trust him, and while it was frustrating Anakin could understand it. He wasn't certain he entirely trusted any of them either - well, maybe Poe as Anakin got the instant impression that the man didn't have an untrustworthy bone in his body - but while he could understand the reluctance, it wasn't useful. They needed to figure out what was happening, which meant answering questions. 

"The last thing I remember was being on board a Yuuzhan Vong worldship above Myrkr," he stepped forward and put two hands down on the currently empty holo-display between himself and his mother. He might as well try to lay out his cards. If it was a trick, the sooner he could figure that out, the sooner he would hopefully be able to deal with it. "I was there with my brother, Jacen, my sister Jaina, and several other Jedi Knights. I can't feel any of them right now, and I have no idea how I would have gotten out of the worldship into a shuttle." 

"There was nothing out of the ordinary above Myrkr, General," Poe stepped forward to look at Anakin. "I'd met our contacts and followed through on that mission as was required and took off from Myrkr. I'd just entered coordinates and made the jump to lightspeed when I went back to double check on the cargo - and that's when I found him lying there half-dead. Honestly, it's probably BB-8 that managed to keep him alive the entire time. But I know he wasn't there when I took off." 

"What are these Yuuzhan Vong?" Ackbar asked, turning his large eyes onto Anakin. 

Anakin looked around the room still incredulous that none of them knew what he was talking about, but he could sense in the Force that they were truly uncertain. As bewildering as it was he took the question seriously. "They came into our galaxy from the outside about two years ago at Sernpidal. Dad, Chewie and I were out there on a favor to Lando Calrissian. We were supposed to drop some stuff off, pick some other stuff up, return to Dubrillion, where Lando had his latest business venture." 

Two years later and it was impossible for Anakin to think about it without a constriction to his heart and a wondering if he could have done something different. It didn't matter now. Perhaps it particularly didn't matter here. 

"We got there and people were panicked. The short version of the story is that the Yuuzhan Vong had used one one of their technologies to pull the moon off orbit - _into_ Sernpidal. The entire planet was destroyed. Dad, Chewie and I were able to encourage some people onto ships, but most of the population was lost with the planet. I had to fly the _Falcon_ out of there. Chewie… he saved my life." Anakin's throat tightened and he closed his eyes for a moment before pushing on. "I couldn't save his."

Anakin could feel the shock from his mother, but he didn't stop to address it, instead continuing onward. "That was our first encounter with them. And over the past two years they have been working their way steadily coreward taking planets one at a time, and all too easily. At first the Republic didn't want to even think about the threat… you tried, Mom, you tried really hard, and Uncle Luke tried too. About the only thing that was holding them at all, were the Jedi, but even we were struggling. There were differences of opinion in how we should address them… and while we as a galaxy couldn't stand together, we fell separately. Dantooine, Ithor, Duro - they took almost every planet that they touched." 

"Jacen, he embarrassed their warmaster, so they put a price on the heads of every Jedi in the galaxy. And they they followed through on that threat, by using the Vronskrs of Myrkr - they hunt with the Force - to breed with a creature from their own galaxy to create a weapon that could track Jedi - the Voxyn." 

"That's why you were on Myrkr?" Dameron spoke up from beside him and Anakin nodded. "Cilghal - she's one of our healers - she was able to put together from tissue samples that every Voxyn was being cloned from one. That one, was on Myrkr. The mission we'd taken on was to kill that Voxyn, and the cloning factory - help save Jedi - hopefully." Anakin realized he had no idea if they'd succeeded or not. "I was leading it," he added finally. 

"You said you were seventeen," Leia said quietly, and there was a quiet shock to her voice that made Anakin look up at her. 

"We were all young - not even knights really, but we needed the Yuuzhan Vong to believe we could be captured to get into the worldship. That was part of the plan. Uncle Luke wanted to lead it but it never would have worked with him. 

"You said I wasn't on board when you took off?" Anakin turned around to look at the pilot next to him. "I just appeared there?"

Dameron looked perplexed. "I know what it sounds like, but I don't have any other explanation. You weren't in any of the crates and there's no way you could have moved out of one. It's like someone dropped you there but the doors were sealed up…"

"Could you show me your flight path?" Anakin asked him. 

"Yeah, I could. BB-8?" 

The droid rolled forward projecting a holo up into the center of the display and Anakin focused in. Dameron's route traced around the planet before taking off into hyperspace. He frowned as he traced it, taking into account the known cities on the planet below. It was difficult to say with one hundred percent certainty but if he were guessing the shuttle had crossed paths with the world ship in orbit around Myrkr. 

"There's no world ship here," he said aloud. But by this point that was less of a surprise. "But it was there and I think it's possible that our paths would have crossed." 

Anakin had no idea what that meant. He was having a difficult time understanding how none of the people standing in front of him knew who he was, or had ever heard about the Yuuzhan Vong. That his own mother was treating him like a stranger, rather than like her son. Nothing about it felt right, so Anakin was trying to just press forward. There was a puzzle here, and it needed solving. So, that was the task in front of him. He turned to Dameron. "What were you doing there?"

Poe exchanged glances with Leia and Ackbar, looking for the brief nod from both before he answered. "I was on a supplies mission." 

"This is a military base." Anakin looked around the room, meeting each person's gaze evenly. "It's not a New Republic base though. And you're not fighting the Yuuzhan Vong, because none of you know what the Yuuzhan Vong are. But I've been on too many military bases in my lifetime to not know one when I see one. They mentioned the Resistance earlier and I assumed at the time that it had something to do with the Yuuzhan Vong, something perhaps less directly under the control of the New Republic - but that's not what this is." 

It was his mother that finally spoke: "We're not Republic, although technically they are feeding us support. And recently that support has been stronger. There's a group called the First Order, which I'm going to take a stab in the dark at and suspect that you aren't familiar with them." Anakin shook his head, and she continued. "They rose out of what was once the Galactic Empire making bids for power. Recently those have become more persistent." 

"An Imperial Remnant?"

"Of sorts, although what they espouse is probably worse than the Empire," Leia sighed. "It's more fanatical." 

"We've got an Imperial Remnant. We'd been at peace with them for about six years before the Yuuzhan Vong showed up, but they've not given us any trouble. Pellaeon, that's their Grand Admiral at the moment, he's…" Anakin shrugged. "I've only met him a few times, but he's a decent man. Not all of the Imperials are necessarily, and they haven't necessarily been willing to loan their support in this fight, but Pellaeon's the sort of man you'd want on your side in a fight. And to be honest, the Republic has had enough problems that I can't blame him for not necessarily wanting to throw his ships in." 

There was silence and Anakin knew they were all considering this. He was too, the questions coming up as he thought about it more. Who was heading the First Order? Where was his father? No one had answered his questions about him. And although people had seemed familiar with the name he wasn't here, and his mother seemed to be going by Organa. Did the Yuuzhan Vong exist here? But something had kept them from invading? Where was his Uncle, or the other Jedi? Even his mother didn't seem to have a lightsaber on her belt. It was like his world - but not like it either. Like those holo games he'd played as a boy: 'There are six things different in this holo. Can you find them?' He'd always found them simple, working through increasingly difficult ones by the time he was three or four. 

"What if there two Myrkr's existing simultaneously?" He ventured as he stared at the holomap. It was both the simplest explanation and the one that was most challenging to wrap his mind around, but if he were going to trust his senses and trust the Force, he had to believe that nothing here was untrue. That was easier to grasp than two entire galaxies existing congruently where timelines had unfolded differently. If that was possible, then how many variations on this story were there? On his story, or on his parents, or on anyone's - could all those variations even be counted or were they like stardust and seemingly unlimited? "Two Myrkr's. The one I remember, and the one that Dameron here just came from. He passed through the spot where the worldship was, simultaneously to my preparing to explode the cloning laboratory the Yuuzhan Vong were using. Somehow they crossed and I ended up on Dameron's ship, and then here." 

"That sounds crazy," Poe said, but there wasn't any malice in his tone. 

"It does," Anakin agreed readily. "But I'm looking around this room at people I know, who don't know me, a galaxy that looks like mine, but doesn't seem to be. I'm open to other explanations, but right now this is the only one I can think of that makes sense." 

"But even say that you're right about there being two galaxies," this voice came from behind Leia, and Anakin turned his attention to the female officer that had been standing quietly, probably taking notes throughout most of this. "How did you get into this one." 

"Anakin this is Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix," Leia introduced them. "And it's a good question." 

"It's not one I have an answer to," Anakin admitted to both of them. 

Or he might have an answer to it. He had been close to death when he'd gotten here, spending days so blacked out that he had no idea how long he'd been blacked out until someone told him. On Myrkr everyone had told him to stop, to rest, to heal - and he'd kept them going because he had to. Because the team had to make it through and the mission had to succeed. He'd gone into the lab assuming he wouldn't make it out of it, and he'd been all right with that - knowing that if the mission succeeded and his brother and sister and Tahiri were safe - that he'd have done the best that he could do. The thoughts floated through his mind. He'd been running mostly on adrenaline and the Force. He'd thought he was dead - well, or to whatever was beyond in the Force. Maybe this was what was beyond somehow.

"The Force. Maybe," he frowned. "It's nothing I've ever heard of before, but the Force is in this galaxy too. If it surrounds and penetrates both galaxies and I was using it heavily during the Mission…"

"You're alive and you're here." 

Anakin shifted his gaze from the holo to his mother's face. His ice blue eyes met her brown ones and he was pretty certain there were tears in them and he realized that without meaning to he'd probably shared most of that last round of thoughts with her. She might not be his mother exactly, and she might not have a lightsaber, but Leia Organa was obviously strong in the Force in any galaxy. "Yeah, I am. I don't know why, but maybe I can help in some way. If I'm here, there has to be some reason I ended up here - especially if it was the Force." 

"You know, that's the most sense any of this conversation has made," Poe Dameron's voice seemed half relieved, and he reached out and clapped Anakin on the shoulder. "Plus it seems like this kid is a real live Jedi, and we could maybe use one of those around." 

Anakin couldn't help a low laugh, and a grin, although the statement brought him another question of weren't there other Jedi around? Somehow, he couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't going to continue to have these questions. He'd just have to jump in and try to figure it out. One question though he wasn't certain he wanted to wait on: "Do you have my lightsaber?" 

"I have it," Leia said calmly. "If you'll join me for dinner tonight in my quarters you can have it back then." 

"All right," he nodded. "So then… what's next." 

"Poe will show you your quarters and walk you around the base. And I'll see you again this evening." 

"If you're tired I can just show you your quarters now," Poe's voice brought Anakin back into the moment and he turned around to face the pilot who had presumably saved his life and reconnected him to his family, well, a version of it anyway. 

Poe was taller than him with kind eyes, dark hair, and a warm smile despite the fact that Anakin was a total stranger to him. The offering alone, and seeming understanding that Anakin might want some time, was more a relief than Anakin would have considered it might be. Anakin moistened his lips and nodded. "Yeah maybe that." 

"This way then," Poe nodded and Anakin followed. 

His eyes took in the directions they went, the different people, looking for ones that looked familiar and occasionally seeing a face that did look familiar although always just a bit different from what he was anticipating. Anakin could feel the curiosity thrumming off the man next to him, and while he appreciated the silence he also knew it wasn't what was needed here. He looked over and offered a half smile. "Thanks for bringing me here, saving my life." 

"You would have done the same," Dameron replied, the warmth on his face increasing at the opening to say something. "Least that's the feeling I'm getting off of you. Like your mom, if someone needs you, you'll be there." 

The comment startled Anakin as he'd never really thought about that as being something he and his mom shared. But he supposed of course it was. That Leia's giving was frequently more politically based than not didn't make the instinct itself less similar. And he had learned it from her as much as he had learned it from his Uncle. So he nodded. "Yeah, that's - I mean I try." 

"You look more like your dad though, but I'm guessing people have told you that before." 

"Once or twice," Anakin shrugged with a smile. "Jaina favours him too, but Jacen looks more like Mom." For a second he couldn't quite keep the worry away. "I hope they're alright." 

"I hope so too," Poe's response was warm and authentic and Anakin blinked and looked over at the man beside him. 

Dameron was handing out a gift to Anakin whether he realized it or not. The gift of believing this incredibly insane story, and Anakin knew how insane it must sound to everyone here. Anakin was honestly a bit surprised they hadn't locked him in cuffs and put him in a cell until they figured out what to do with him. Then again keeping a Jedi in a cell wouldn't have worked out for them and maybe they knew that. He tucked this piece of information back away for later. He might not be exactly free here, but he'd been given some freedom - those were two different things. Perhaps he'd have a better feel after talking to his Mom tonight. 

"Thanks," Anakin replied softly. "You've known Mom - General Organa - for a while?" 

"Not a long time, but I've known of her for a lot longer," Poe said. "My parents both fought with the Rebel Alliance, my Mom flew with them and worked with both your mom and your Uncle. So, I grew up hearing stories about her long before I ever met her." He shrugged easily. "Guess she's always been a git of a personal hero, so when I had the chance to help here - well, it's what _my _parents would have done too."__

__"Who were your parents?"_ _

__"Kes Dameron & Shara Bey?" _ _

__The names didn't ring a bell to Anakin, he wondered if they would have to Jaina. Maybe Poe existed in his universe as well, just never in as close a proximity to the Solo family as this one had. "They sound like good people," he said instead._ _

__They had reached a door and Poe opened it. "It's not a lot, we've not got a lot of space, but right now it's just yours. You might get some roommates before the week is out, but I think the General thought giving you some space to heal without the interruptions might be good for at least a day or two."_ _

__The room was pretty standard military bunking. Two bunks, one on top of the other, a refresher just off to the side that was pretty much big enough to turn around in, and a small area for dressing. It was a bit larger than the bunk area he'd shared with his siblings on the _Falcon _And it was more than Anakin had been given to himself in weeks, but the other man probably couldn't know that and neither could have his mother. He stepped in and turned back to Poe. "It's more than adequate, thank you."___ _

____"Hey, you aren't sharing it with an overly enthusiastic BB-8 unit and another pilot, so it's almost five star accommodations," Poe grinned at him, which brought an echo of that grin to Anakin's face as well._ _ _ _

____"Well, Fiver wasn't with me, so I guess I'll have to do with my own internal alarm clock."_ _ _ _

____"FIver your droid?"_ _ _ _

____"Yeah, he's an R7 unit, I modified him specially to work with the XJ series X-wings we were flying. He was built for-"_ _ _ _

____"Don't R7's work with-"_ _ _ _

____"E-wings." The two finished the sentence together and Anakin's grin broke into an authentic one. "All right, at least some things between our universes are the same."_ _ _ _

____"You modified him to work with an X-wing? That must have taken hours."_ _ _ _

____"Yeah, I just - he was the newest model and I wanted something that was new, had the speed that you couldn't get from another model. They've really fast processors, and so I figured it was worth the time. And it did take a bit, but I've always been good with droids and to be honest, I kind of needed the project to keep my mind off of other stuff at the time. He saved my life a few times too so I'm not remotely sorry I spent the time."_ _ _ _

____"Yeah, you never are. BB-8's been with me since I started flying and I haven't wiped his memory once. He's a good droid, loyal and clever."_ _ _ _

____"I told myself I wouldn't wipe Fiver's memory short of an actual catastrophe. I've seen what Artoo has been able to do for Uncle Luke over the years. Speaking of," Anakin paused, asking one of the questions that he'd been holding since he woke up the first time, but no one had, as yet, given him an answer to. "Is Uncle Luke here? I can do some meditation on my own, but I thought talking to another Jedi might not be all bad either."_ _ _ _

____Poe hesitated and Anakin could practically see the conversation taking place in his head even without the Force. The guy might be an amazing pilot, and know a bit about ships and droids, but Anakin hoped they never put him in New Republic Intelligence - or whatever was the equivalent of it here - it felt like every emotion showed across his face. "Luke's not here, and not immediately contactable. That's probably a better question directed towards General Organa."_ _ _ _

____"Another Jedi Master then? Or one I could contact?"_ _ _ _

____"No, there are no other Jedi."_ _ _ _

____That statement was enough to cause Anakin to pause, but he'd just finished telling himself that Poe was incredibly readable and authentic, and even without the Force - well, he was telling the truth. Anakin shifted his weight and stuck his hands in his pockets as he looked at Poe. "None?"_ _ _ _

____"There was an incident. Skywalker was training some Jedi, and… there are different stories, but all of them end about the same way. The trainees killed, And Skywalker was one of the only ones that survived."_ _ _ _

____Anakin swallowed back a rather un-Jedi-like Corellian curse. "I see."_ _ _ _

____"You've got a larger group of Jedi where you're from?"_ _ _ _

____"It's not huge. But there's around a hundred of us, yeah. There were a few more before the war started, but we've been being picked off by the Yuuzhan Vong of late. Still, there is _an _Order, even if it's not really put together the most stable yet."___ _ _ _

______"I wish I had better news from you on that front."_ _ _ _ _ _

______Anakin shook his head and reached his own hand over to put on Poe's arm. "It's not your fault. None of this is, and you've been incredibly helpful and in ways you don't even know. Thank you." He took a breath to steady his emotions for the moment. "You said you'd give me a tour of the base later?"_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Whenever you're ready," Poe responded. "Here's my commlink number, just call and I'll come find you."_ _ _ _ _ _

______The quiet of the room-no droids, no medical alarms, no other beings - was a relief after days in the medbay. Anakin turned around, but instead of the bed or the refresher - some sort of cleaning honestly sounded amazing - he sank down to the floor and into the Force. He wasn't certain he would find answers there exactly, but it was a place to start._ _ _ _ _ _


	3. Chapter 3

The tour had ended up being more enlightening than Anakin had originally anticipated. Poe was a knowledgeable tour guide who was also enthusiastic and passionate about what they were doing and Anakin found that he liked him. For all the differences between home and here on a political scale there were similarities in the everyday things from the droids they skirted, to the ships in the bay, to the computer systems, and the smiles from the people Anakin was introduced to, Anakin found himself keeping up, easily asking questions about things as they came up, admiring Poe's modified X-wing, which Anakin would have loved the chance to actually take out and try out. By the time he'd found himself in front of his mother's door for dinner, Anakin felt like he had a much stronger understanding of the Resistance. 

Unfortunately, dinner with his mother was proving to be more challenging than he had anticipated. It didn't help that Anakin found himself feeling more like the reticent twelve year old kid he had been once upon a time, than like the (probably) seventeen year old who had not more than a few weeks ago led a team of Jedi into enemy territory. The conversation thus far seemed to have mostly been centered around questions about his background, which he'd been able to answer, and him asking his mother questions about the galaxy, which she mostly answered even as he could tell there were things she was skirting the edges of. He would have known it without the Force simply from having known her as long as he had. 

The worst part though was that he could feel his mother trying, and could tell she was as lost as he was. He equally suspected that he wasn't making a good impression, something he silently cursed, but wasn't certain how to change. He had frequently been quieter than his siblings, until the Yuuzhan Vong had shown up, until his quiet had fed into anger, until Tahiri had been taken, until he'd had to help teach Valin and Sannah and get them off a Yuuzhan Vong inhabited planet: Until he'd been expected to lead. Recently Anakin had been required to stand up and make a case for something and everyone had expected that he would do so. He'd stepped into that role, even when it was uncomfortable, but this was a completely different type of discomfort. 

This was the discomfort of knowing someone, while at the same time having no real knowledge of the person they were. Like trying to walk on sand, he would think he was placing his steps well, and would end up sinking anyway, and even the Force wasn't giving him good hints about what directions to take with his questions. He had so many, and he would have preferred in many ways to have been given an X-wing and pointed in the direction of the enemy. It would have been easier than this. 

He looked down at the plate of food, which differed from what he'd been given in the med-bay only in terms of presentation. It hit Anakin that this was precisely Leia Organa Solo. She had shaved her head along with everyone else on Duro. She would not put herself above her soldiers or those she was living and serving with even if she could have done so easily as a former Chief of State, a former princess of Alderaan, or in this case, as a General apparently. 

He placed the fork down and looked up at her. Her face looked older than he knew, but it was the same face that had comforted him so many times. This was the same face that had helped him when Chewbacca had died and his Father had ran away and Anakin had feared that Han Solo would never forgive him (sometimes he still feared that this was the case even if things had been better recently). And while she might not remember any of those things, she was the same person… right? That felt like a philosophical question that was something Jacen might talk into the ground rather than anything Anakin would have ever considered which is what made this difficult. But was he expecting it to be easy? Nothing worth doing was ever easy, and if he didn't give himself the opportunity to be brave here, he was never going to simply ask the question. 

"Where is Uncle Luke?" 

For a long moment he wasn't certain that she was going to answer but finally she breathed in and squared her shoulders. 

"He's not here." 

"Yeah, that much I'd figured out," Anakin said, and while he could have probably tried harder to keep the edge of sarcasm and frustration out of his voice, he didn't. "Something about looking around and not finding him." 

Leia raised an eyebrow at him and it did nothing to make him feel less like a petulant teenager. "Fine then, what about Dad?" He could see the lines in his mother's face tighten slightly and Anakin pulled his eyebrows together in an echo of those lines. 

So far he'd found that most every question about the First Order, about the Resistance, and the state of the galaxy had been answered without any real hesitation. Poe had been a little quiet about some of them, and not offered more than what he was asked, but he hadn't refused to answer, not even about questions that Anakin were pretty certain had the potential to be compromising had he been a plant or a spy. As crazy as his story was and as much as he had a difficult time believing it himself, it seemed to him that his mother and that the other higher ups on this base were at least considering it the working theory. 

And yet, every time he asked about his father, his uncle, the Jedi - anything that really, personally, intimately mattered to him - he seemed to hit blocks and obfuscation. It had been one thing with Poe, who when he'd simply said it was the sort of question for the General, had felt more like respect than avoidance. But this couldn't be anything but avoidance and Anakin pressed his lips together, tightening his jaw as he tried to pull on the more calming practices that his Jedi training had given him. 

"Do you not trust me?" He asked finally. "Is that what this is about? Because Dameron seemed very willing to give me information about this base. If I was going to sell you all out, you'd already be kriffed, because I've got more information about how you run things than any spy or enemy agent should have simply from having been given a tour this afternoon. Not to mention that you're sitting here, having dinner with me, _by yourself_ , which just seems stupid if you don't trust that what I'm saying is true." 

"It's not about trust," Leia returned. 

"Then what?" Anakin persisted. "I know you aren't my mother, and he isn't my Uncle, and this Han Solo isn't my Dad, but you share the same names, the same face, and some other similarities. I'm just trying to figure things out. Are you together here? It seemed from things people said that you were, but he's not here. I'm just trying to maybe talk to him. Maybe get in touch with a Jedi again," he stopped, caught by a rush of emotion that even if he saw his Dad and his Uncle, like the woman sitting in front of him, they would look at him like a total stranger. He swallowed and closed his eyes against the sudden rush of longing for home. It was something that had been difficult to find in the past few years - since Sernpidal, since Chewie's death, and now this. He picked up a fork, pushing some of the pudding to his mouth. The tastelessness it held he suspected had nothing to do with the food and everything to do with him. 

"There are no other Jedi, just Luke," Leia hesitated as if she was going to amend that, but then she chose not to. "He's gone searching for answers. He's not here. And I can't just let you take off to find him. There are people who are looking for him and they might use you to get him. Until you have a better understanding of the potential dangers and until I know you better… I'm sorry, Anakin." 

For all it was frustrating it also felt like the truth. Anakin could tell the difference between avoidance and obfuscation and truth being parsed out without details. It didn't really help him exactly, but it was more than he'd had previously. He pulled in a breath and straightened his shoulders. "What kind of answers?" 

"There's a man at the head of the First Order, at least as best as we know, his name is Snoke and he's powerful in the Force. It was him that was behind the destruction of the Jedi that Luke was trying to teach. It's him that's behind the First Order's power and ability although he is enabled by a great many forces and individuals throughout the galaxy and the Republic." 

"Is he a Sith?" 

"Truthfully, I don't know," Leia shook her head. "I just know that his power had a long reach, and that he was able to touch so much that I didn't realize, and now we are here. When my father spoke of the Republic, it was with such passion, that freedom - but it turns out that it's more difficult to pull that together." 

"At home too," Anakin admitted quietly. "I'd like to think that without the Yuuzhan Vong that the New Republic would have been fine, but the cracks were there. So much public opinion against the Jedi… it's hard to fight against a propaganda campaign that made us out to be the enemy of the government back in the day. Many of the non-human species were angry, feeling as if they had been wronged and those wrongs had not been righted… it was a fair criticism…" 

"Yet you cannot right all of the wrongs overnight," Leia said. 

Anakin looked up at her and nodded, offering her a small smile. "Just the one in front of you." 

Leia offered him a return smile. It was sad, and didn't quite meet her eyes, and she looked up to meet his gaze. There was scrutiny in it, and Anakin could feel that, but he didn't flinch away from it. Certainly he'd spent enough time scrutinizing the situation he found himself in and the people around him trying to sort out what he was doing here. As she reached for the glass in front of her, she said: "Your lightsaber is on the table over there. You should get it before you leave." 

"Good," and there was a relief in having the weapon back in his possession even if it was perhaps a false relief. In and of itself it would grant him no peace and Anakin knew that. It was perhaps simply the small piece of home from the lightsaber to the lambent within it, it was a tie to whom he had been before he had ended up in a galaxy that felt foreign to him. 

The conversation turned naturally then to other things, and it was as they stood by the door while Anakin attached the lightsaber to his belt to get ready to return to his own quarters that Leia surprised him by reaching for his hand. 

"Han's dead." 

Anakin's eyes shot up for his gaze to land on his mother's face. The tears at the corner of her eyes told Anakin everything that he needed to know and his breath came difficult for a moment. The question of how sprang to his lips, but almost as quickly was replaced by an instinct that Anakin didn't ignore. 

For all his older brother gave him a bad time about just jumping in and not thinking, the truth was that usually Anakin had spent a fair amount of time thinking about things ahead of time. He was certain he had wrestled with the light and the dark as much as his brother ever had. When he'd come to his own peace with the Dark Side, it had been after years of wrestling. But Jacen wasn't wrong that Anakin did frequently act on instinct too, and right now it was instinct that pushed him to close the difference between him and his mother using her hand on his as the beginnings of a hug that he wrapped her in. Sometime in the past two years he'd grown taller than her and the infrequency with which he'd had the opportunity to hug his mother at home in recent months simply lent to the strangeness of it here, but it didn't keep him from holding on through the mixture of emotions that pushed through him. 

He hadn't expected to find home exactly. He had known that if Han Solo and he came to face to face, that it wouldn't be with _his_ father. Anakin had understood it would be different, but this was just one further reminder that this wasn't home and that everything was different. That if his mother looked alone, perhaps it was because she was. 

"I'm sorry," he murmured instead, and when Leia began to pull back several moments later, they both had damp eyes. 

"Me too," Leia said as she reached a hand up to wipe the corner of her eye. "You look so much like him, it's eerie." 

"Yeah, I've been told that," Anakin shifted. "It must be unspeakably odd for you." 

"It is, but now that you are in front of me, I think it is an oddness that can be conquered." 

This brought a smile to Anakin's face and he round her hand once more to offer it a squeeze. "You can only work with what's directly in front of you." 

"Precisely." 

It was only after Anakin was back in his own room that he realized he had no idea how long ago his father had died. He had no idea how long he and his mom had been together in this galaxy - and it was clear to him that they had been at some point together, both from other people's comments, and from Leia's own words and actions. 

"You can not solve all the problems overnight," he muttered to himself as he stripped off his shirt and crawled into the bunk. "Only the one in front of you." 

\--

"We're going to get you in an X-wing." 

Anakin looked up at the enthusiastic sound of Poe's voice, and for the first time since the following night's dinner with his mother, he found a genuine grin crossing his face. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Poe sat down beside him at the mess hall table, his tray clapping down hard enough to spill the caf out over the edges of the cup. If Poe noticed he wasn't bothered, instead he turned around and looked over at Anakin, a bit of a question lurking in his eyes. "They may want to put you in a simulator before they let you take it up." 

Anakin shrugged. "I can do simulator hours if you want me to. I don't think I need them, but I'm willing to jump hoops if it gets me up in an actual ship." 

Of course it didn't hurt that he had literally nothing better to do. At least the simulator hours would be a way to spend his time other than meditation, trying to sort through the family that this galaxy had given him - or hadn't given him as the case might be - and the question of what he was supposed to do about any of the information he'd learned thus far. Besides, Anakin might come to some conclusions while dodging weapons fired in a X-wing fighter. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had brought him some clarity. 

For now though, he finished off the food in front of him and shifted in his chair so he could look at Poe more easily. 

"You think they're going to let me take a ship up, really?" 

"Really," Poe grinned. "I talked to some people after we talked yesterday. Told them a bit about your experience, that you're a Solo, and that you'd done some flying in battle, and they got very interested very quick." 

Anakin grinned. "You mean, they didn't just get distracted by wanting to know who Anakin Solo was?" 

"Only briefly." the edges of Poe's eyes crinkled with his smile. "I got them back on track pretty easily. I'm good at that." 

"Really? Cause I would have figured you'd be better at getting people off track." 

This brought an easy laugh to Poe's lips. "You might be onto something, but I'm a damn good squadron leader, and you know how to fly an X-wing, you're a Jedi, and you're a Solo, which if you're half as good a pilot as other members of your family are rumoured to be, you might not be as good as _me_ , but I could use you in the air." 

Anakin laughed, but it faded off and he picked up the flimsy cup his caf had been in. There were a few drops in the bottom and he swirled it gently before raising it to his lips to sip again. "I'm probably not sticking around," he said when he put it back down to the tray. "I need to try to get in touch with my Uncle." 

Poe grew more serious with this as well and he nodded. "I figured you would. Doesn't mean we might not still have a reason to use you before we can get a ship reallocated your direction."

"I've gathered they're a bit scarce right now," Anakin ventured missing the ease with which he could have found one back at home. Maybe ease was the wrong word, but no probably not. Outside of the use of the _Falcon_ \- which, okay, would have happened only under the most extreme of circumstances and probably only if his Father was along with him. The thought of Han Solo meant reminding himself of what he'd discovered from his mother and it brought a sharp twist in his abdomen that Anakin pushed away. Even without the _Falcon_ though, Anakin would have had access to one of the XJ series as a Jedi Knight as well as any number of resources he could have pulled on if one of those things wasn't going to work out. 

But, he wasn't at home, he didn't have those resources - it was just him. Well, not just him. If it was just him, he'd have probably been dead from exposure, not a pleasant thought, but that was close enough to being true. The Resistance didn't know him, and while he suspected if he was willing to assist, they'd repay the favor, he would have to prove himself. Getting a ship, and the freedom with which to take off and find his Uncle would require work and some sacrifice. 

"We've been getting more supplies from the Republic," Poe admitted. "After the attack on the Hosnian system, there are a lot more supportive people in the Military. Some of the Senators are still debating whether or not we should openly engage with someone with that kind of power - but the ships have been sliding our way regardless." 

"People in the Military aren't usually dumb about these things," Anakin nodded. "It's the same at home, they just get their hands tied by the politicians." 

"There are good people in the Republic," Poe said with certainty. "But there's a lot that aren't, they all get mixed in together and it's hard to tell the difference sometimes." 

"Light and dark have to meet somewhere, and they can swirl together into gray," Anakin remarked. 

Poe looked over at him curiously. "That's an interesting sentiment for a Jedi." 

Was it? 

Anakin didn't know if it was a statement that his brother would agree with. He didn't know if it was even a statement that his Uncle would agree with. Maybe it was an odd statement for him to make considering the number of times he had fought with the possibility of the Dark Side. The full weight of realising that he might be the first Jedi that Poe had ever spent any time hit him. This had always been true; when there were only 100 Jedi and billions and trillions of beings in the galaxy so it couldn't help but be true, but here knowing that the Jedi trainees that his Uncle had been working with had all been destroyed and that his Uncle was the only Jedi alive this far after the fall of the Order gave the knowledge a different edge. 

"I wasn't exactly talking about the Force. Although it has applicability there. Jedi are not greater than other beings," Anakin looked over at Poe thoughtfully. "And every being in this galaxy has the capacity for light and dark. Every one of us makes choices about which we'll choose to act on. Yeah, I'm a Jedi, but I'm as human as the next person with the aptitude for both light and dark, and sometimes it's not always super clear at the time what you're acting from. As a Jedi, I've committed to serving the light, but that doesn't mean the light is always bright noon - sometimes it's more cloudy day. Bad analogy probably, but it's not always a distinct line." 

"That feels reasonable," Poe tore off a piece of bread and seemed to consider this for a moment.

He was interrupted from any follow-up by two young women approaching the table. The first, wore civilian clothes in a Corellian style, was probably about Anakin's own age with dark curly hair and amber skin, and who slid into the chair across from him. The other, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with shiny black hair, gave them both a quick grin. "You done, Dameron? Jensen wants to see you and I assume this is your new recruit?' She raised an eyebrow at Anakin.

Poe nodded, "Yeah, this is Anakin. Anakin, this is Jessika Pava, not the best pilot in the squadron, but pretty damn near close." 

"You watch yourself," Jessika laughed as Poe stood up. "I know where you sleep." 

Poe chuckled. "And this is Zayna Ardellian, and she _is_ the damn best slicer the Resistance has." 

Zayna's lips twitched into a smile and she bowed slightly over her food. "It's all right Jess, he got the important part right." 

Jessika snorted and sat down beside Zayna. 

"It's good to meet you," Anakin offered them both a grin. "But he's promised me an X-wing test-flight, so…" he shrugged and nodded towards Dameron. 

"Can't turn one of those down," Jessika grinned back at him. "Just watch him, he'll try to convince you he's the best pilot in the galaxy or something." 

"That's cause I am!" Poe's call came from three tables down and Anakin and Jessika shared a grin before he nodded to Zayna and followed Poe to empty their trays. 

The flight deck was like stepping home, familiar in the best of ways with the droids, the flight crews, the X-wings themselves. Yes, everything looked just a little bit different, but it was enough the same for Anakin to breathe out and give the ships a smile. He might be in a galaxy that was not his own, where his mother looked at him as if he were a stranger, despite looking just like his mother, where his father who would have looked at him the same way was dead, killed by an Imperial Remnant that had sought and succeeded in destroying planets much the way Alderaan had been destroyed, his siblings might not be here and he might be alone, but the ships were familiar. 

They stepped up to one and Anakin ran his hand along the side. "This one yours?" 

"Nah, that's Pava's actually, this one here, this one's mine." Poe slapped the side gently. "You want to get up in there and take a look?" 

"You sure?" 

"Knock yourself out." 

Anakin scrambled up the ladder and slid into the cockpit. The fit was similar to the XJ series, although he could tell instantly there was a bit more room where his feet were - this ship would accommodate non-human species more easily than the XJ series which was an improvement so far as Anakin was concerned. "It's got good feel to it," he remarked down to Poe.

"More or less what you're used to?" 

"Yeah, where're the -" Anakin twisted his head down to get a better look at the dials underneath - a series of levers and controls that were within easy reach and the sort of automatic reach for any pilot. Seemed they were the same here except… "You've got the hyperspace lever reversed from what I'm used to," he laughed. "That's the first thing I'll need to get used to. Never good to jump into lightspeed when you're in the middle of a battle." 

Poe chuckled. "Well, if you want to make a quick getaway it might be all right, but you'd best have your coordinates set before you do it unless you want to be stardust." 

"Yeah, this is - it's really a lot like what we have at home" Anakin checked buttons against his instincts, running through scenarios in his head as he did so. As he finished obvious pieces, he pulled himself up so he could look down at Poe over the edge of the cockpit. "They going to let me take something up, or they want to run me through a simulator first?" 

"They want to run you through the simulator," Poe said mildly. "But I suspect, they'll have you in a spare ship as soon as they can get you one." 

Anakin pushed himself up, crawling back down the ladder to come and stand in front of Poe. "You're short on pilots." 

Anakin knew the shadow that crossed Poe's face came from comrades lost. "We lost a lot when we had to destroy Starkiller Base, and we still haven't filled the squadron." 

Anakin looked up at the ship. Jaina had always been the pilot, the one who _loved_ flying and who was amazing at all of it. Anakin could fly, all three of them _could_ fly, but Jaina - Jaina had _breathed_ it. "Yeah, if I can help a bit while I'm around here. I've logged a few hours of battle time, not usually against TIEs, but I'm guessing after coralskippers, TIEs will be a piece of cake." 

"That's the spirit," Poe slapped him on the shoulder. "Let me introduce you to some people and see if we can't get your qualifications logged more officially, and then I want to hear about these coralskippers cause I feel like there's a story behind that."


	4. Chapter 4

Days passed in a whirl of simulators and then finally an actual T-70 (the thing did move better than Anakin's T-65XJ although he suspected on par to his Uncle's XJ3 which was newer, faster, and the best the Republic shipyards had to offer), and then in an entirely different note - reading. Which was easy enough to do in his room, as without a roommate, quiet and meditation space wasn't so hard to come by. 

The reading and the time he seemed to be allowed to do so was new. Anakin had not read this much since he'd been a boy hiding under his mother's desk while she worked. When Jaina and Jacen had chummed with the closeness that only two Force-sensitive twins could obtain, Anakin would give up on keeping up and escape to the quiet of his mother's office and take delight in the fact that she didn't chase him out most of the time. And so he'd read datapads and stories and how droids work, and theories of spaceship design, and a somewhat obscene amount of Republic history leading up to the Galactic Empire. When he was eight and it still felt as if it would be forever before he would be old enough to join Jaina and Jacen at the Praxeum on Yavin IV it had been a way to pass time.

Looking back he realised it had also been a way of coming to terms with the legacy in his name. Who had Anakin Skywalker been? What did anyone know about _Jedi_ and star pilot Anakin Skywalker? What had happened when the Emperor had shifted the Republic into an Empire with fanfare and applause? And Darth Vader? What had he done? What choices had he made throughout the time at the Emperor's side? It was an intellectual exploration that had moved into a spiritual exploration. And when he'd asked his Uncle for the time to visit Dagobah and he and Tahiri and Master Ikrit had explored the cave, the nature of choice as it fed into his life as a Jedi and his use of the Force, he had found some answers. 

He could have said that was full circle, questions answered, but Anakin knew better. Watching his Aunt on Dantooine he'd come to additional understanding of the Force. Trekking across Yavin IV with a Yuuzhan Vong shamed one he'd learned something additional about himself as he was forced to butt his beliefs up against the Yuuzhan Vong's culture and understanding, and he'd realized both what of his belief held in the storm, and what needed to be scraped away and rebuilt on a stronger foundation. The question of who Anakin Skywalker had been bled into the question of who Anakin Solo would be and pretending otherwise would have been disingenuous. 

Now stripped away from the Jedi Order, his family, and his friends, Anakin was finding himself once again amongst the datapads during the evenings trying to answer questions about history. Once again he was reading about Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, and this time… Han Solo and Leia Organa as well. Slowly he began piecing together a post-Endor history that was both familiar and yet starkly different. A Republic built with his mother working within it until recently. The First Order, a fanatical organisation that had been born out of the ashes of an Empire almost as if the Empire as it had been before the treaty had retreated to lick its wounds and come back more effectively. 

Then again, there was a Force user behind the First Order. And Anakin knew that small thing had the potential to change everything he knew. If C'Baoth had succeeded with Thrawn, or if the Emperor's clone had succeeded with his Uncle, or with himself… In his dreams, that touch of the Dark Side still lingered and would push itself to the front teasing him with the power to right the galaxy. It was a temptation that Anakin felt he had come to terms with, like a slightly crazy Uncle you couldn't get rid of, but one that could be incredibly dangerous. 

But while meditation space was easy to come by a place to stretch his training in the Force was more challenging. It had been a bit of a trick to figure out a time when the gymnasium was low use enough for him to actually pull out his lightsaber and go through some of the training exercises he'd been used to doing back on the _Errant Venture_. Eventually he'd found that late evening seemed to work and so tonight he'd arrived and leaned into the Force with meditation, and a remote, and the simple practice that the space allowed him. Coming from the war as he had, practice had been a matter of life and death and had usually been something he did with other Jedi so it was odd to find himself alone and only pushing against his own abilities. It wasn't perfect, but for now it was something. 

Tonight the space was empty, which was a preference to the one or two people that Anakin had sometimes found there. They tended to watch, and he could hardly begrudge them this, but it also meant that he had to keep more of himself in the room, and could throw himself less into the motion and the meditation and where the Force would lead him. Tonight though it was just him and the Force and Anakin stripped off his jacket, pulled his lightsaber off his belt and stepped into the center of the room with the remote turned on the highest and most intense mode that it had, and he let himself fall into the streams of the Force flowing around him. 

How long he'd been going before he realized he wasn't alone, Anakin couldn't say. All he knew was that he had landed on his feet and became aware of the fact that he was being watched again. He landed, gave himself a moment to recalibrate to the ground, and then switched the lightsaber off as he turned around to view the newcomer to the room. A familiar looking young woman stood in the doorway leaned up against the door jam. 

"Don't stop on my account," she said quietly. "I wasn't trying to disturb you."

"Lieutenant Connix isn't it?" Anakin had met more people and tried to absorb more names in the past few weeks than he was used to having to do and found himself increasingly grateful for his extraordinarily good memory. She'd been in the room the first day he'd spoken with his mother and Poe -- One of the few Resistance staff that had made the cut in that meeting. 

"We met once."

"I try to remember names, and fortunately I apparently got the good memory genes." Anakin shrugged and grinned. "You don't have to hide in the doorway. I don't own the gym." 

"They said you practiced late," she bit her lip and stepped forward into the room, her eyes falling on the lightsaber that he held. "I just - I've never seen a Jedi in action outside of archive holos." 

The fact that this was true, and not just for some of the galaxy, but for most of the galaxy, was depressing, but like so many other things Anakin couldn't change it all at once. Instead he smiled. "So did I hold up to the expectations?" 

"Maybe," her own lips twitched slightly. "I've never seen a purple lightsaber before." 

"It's got a non-traditional crystal in it," Anakin said, using the moment to switch the blade on again and the purple light filled the space between them. "It used to be blue, but the original crystal broke, so I had to come up with something else, and then it was purple. Which, I like, to be honest." 

"It's unique." She paused. "Or maybe every Jedi used to have a purple lightsaber. I guess I don't really know." 

Anakin chuckled as he deactivated the blade. "My sister's is violet, at home. There are some other Jedi that have them other colors too. But blues and greens are pretty popular. The occasional gold, or other color."

"Some variety seems like it'd be nice," Connix said with a smile of her own. "I really didn't mean to interrupt you." 

Anakin shook his head and stepped past her towards the edge of the room where he'd left the water canteen. "Nah, it's fine. I was really about to be done anyway. How long have you been watching?" 

"About five minutes," she had followed him. "Didn't you know?" 

"No," Anakin admitted warily. "I need to work on my dual concentration I guess."

"So I wasn't the smallest bit distracting?" 

"No, I-" he looked up at her and realized she might be teasing and changed track, raising his eyebrows with a smirk. "Obviously, if I didn't know you were there at all." 

"That's disappointing." 

Anakin ignored the fact that he didn't exactly know how to respond to that by taking a drink from the canteen and when he put it back down he nodded his head for her to join him on the bench. "So how did you get involved with the Resistance? Everyone seems to have a story."

"Mine isn't anything heroic or amazing. It's family, really," she replied as she sat down beside him. 

"That doesn't mean it's not heroic," Anakin pointed out. "I mean, half of my story is family too - which I'm realising here where I'm -" he struggled with what to say without sounding like he was whining. The sudden understanding of how many doors had opened because of his upbringing and identity had been a significant part of getting used to being on this base. While seeing additionally how many doors had opened simply because of who he claimed to be had made it all obvious to him in ways he had never considered at home. "Here where it isn't home," he finished. "Heroics are separate from blood." 

"My parents were Alderaanian," she said softly. "Like General Organa. My mother knew her well, in fact. I grew up spending time around her family when the Republic was still in infancy. My parents stayed in the government to try to change things there while General Organa started the Resistance. I thought I could do more good here. So here I am." 

"Your parents were in the Republic government?" Anakin asked. "Senators, or…" 

She looked over at him. "They weren't in the Hosnian system if that's what you're asking." 

"Yeah," Anakin looked down at the toes of his boots for a moment. "I guess, it was, and I'm glad they weren't." 

"My father has family on Corellia, fortunately they were visiting at the time. But I haven't seen them since the attack." 

Silence fell between them as Anakin reached for the canteen again for another sip of water. With every person he talked to he got a clearer picture of this galaxy, just a little bit tighter and more certain. But it still called for intentional effort to ask the questions and to hold the conversations and to risk asking the wrong thing, and sometimes it was exhausting. . 

"It's got to be strange being here. It sounds as if the home you knew was much different." 

"Different," Anakin agreed. "Although I'm not certain that it was necessarily better. We'd lost a lot of planets and beings in the past few years. Even with the Jedi. You said you've known General Organa for a while."

"Yeah, I used to play with her kids when I was much younger, before Breha was kidnapped and Ben was killed."

Anakin paused with the canteen halfway between his lips and his knee and he turned to look at her. "She has kids?" 

"Had," Connix said softly. "I thought she might have mentioned them to you, but she doesn't much. It's painful, obviously." 

Anakin nodded. "I guess I hadn't gotten to that part in recent history somehow. Can you - I mean, you knew them…?" 

Connix took a breath in and leaned back as if accessing memories from a dusty memory bank. "Ben was older than I was, by quite a bit, but he was - nice… He'd look after me and show me a thing or two sometimes. I know that he probably got tired of having to put up with me when my parents came to visit General Organa, but he never seemed to complain although he was distant sometimes. Breha was close to my age, but we moved out of the system when she was probably three or so? I didn't know her as well. She was kidnapped when she was four. I'm surprised you haven't stumbled across it - the holos talked about it incessantly for months. It still sometimes comes up - one of those cases that people like to claim they have answers for, you know?" 

Anakin let out a breath slowly. He turned the lightsaber in his hand over. "I guess for all the differences between universes, there's some similarities too. Jaina and Jacen, those are my siblings, and I -- we were kidnapped multiple times. But no one ever succeeded in actually stealing us permanently. You said Ben had died?" 

"The General sent him to train with Luke Skywalker and his students some point after Breha's kidnapping," she looked over at him. "And you've probably heard about what happened with the Jedi." 

"Poe had mentioned it," Anakin said. And he'd looked up a few things himself, but somehow had not managed to stumble across the fact that Leia Organa had a son that had been killed in the attack. He turned his lightsaber over once more before setting it to the side and looking over at her. "So your parents knew the General, and that's how you got involved?" 

"They connected with her later on, after the First Order became more of a threat," Connix's brown eyes were calm and empathetic. "And I came with her two years ago to help. I thought it might be a better use of my time than University on Coruscant." 

"In some ways I think I've learned more about my family," he stopped and waved a hand towards the general base. "The family here from you than I have anyone else." 

"I'm not trying to be a gossip," she quickly put in.

"No, no that's not what I meant at all," Anakin felt his cheeks flush slightly. "I just meant, well, thank you. It's cleared up a few things. And - it's helpful. I won't go blundering in unaware to things I shouldn't, which is all I feel like I've done where my mother- General Organa, is concerned." 

"Oh. No, that makes sense then." 

He looked over at her. She wore her hair up in a braided style that kept it off her neck and he could tell that she still felt embarrassed for what she'd said regardless. _You really shouldn't,_ he thought as he tried to figure out the next thing to say. 

"I just didn't mean to seem as if I were speaking out of turn." 

The statement was such an immediate response to his thought that for an instant he opened his mouth to respond to it, before the fact that it was such an immediate and likely response to his thoughts hit him and he stopped. Had she _heard_ him? But she didn't seem to be giving any inclination of it. 

"You didn't," he said thoughtfully. "Thank you even." 

"Right. Okay." 

"Yeah." 

The silence between them had taken on an edge and Anakin shifted, and then stood up. "I'd best get some rest, but it was good to talk to you Lieutenant Connix." 

"Oh, yeah." 

Her face seemed to brighten as she realized he was leaving and Anakin wondered if the conversation had been that much of a disappointment. It hadn't seemed as if she wanted to leave when they were in the middle of it. 

"You should call me Kaydel Ko though. I mean, if you'd like, you can." 

Anakin felt as if the conversation had suddenly moved to a ship's deck, with turbulence and the inability to keep his feet entirely stable under him. But he smiled as he attached the lightsaber back to his belt. "Yeah, all right. Kaydel Ko, then." He met her eyes. "And you should just call me Anakin, if you want."

"Anakin works. It was good to watch you doing the lightsaber thing…" 

"Anytime you want to watch it's fine." Anakin's cheeks felt warm in a way he couldn't explain and he nodded and turned to leave. He was halfway back to his room before he realized he really hadn't told her goodnight, or goodbye, or anything like it. And probably, he was an idiot.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning Anakin was requested to the control room. When he arrived he found Admiral Ackbar and his mother once again alongside Poe Dameron and some additional faces that he recognized from his introductions around the base. It was clear upon his entry that the meeting had already been happening for a while. 

"Oh good, Anakin," Poe greeted him with a grin and a slap on the shoulder as he stepped up to the holo display unit. "I'm glad you're here." 

Anakin looked across at his mother who smiled at him, but he couldn't help but feel as if there were some distance to it as if he was on some sort of probation while she answered the question of whether or not she would actually accept him as her son. Was he worthy of the label? Was he likely to cause problems or make her life more challenging than he already had done? Perhaps the distance was being created by both of them. They were strangers after all despite the fact that they shared DNA.

"What's up?" He said aloud, pulling himself to the moment and away from the complicated possibilities of cross-universe family history. 

Poe glanced at Leia, and she looked over at Anakin, her tone professional: "We've got a mission and Commander Dameron would like to take you on it." 

Anakin looked at his mom for a second and then turned his attention to Dameron. "You want me?" 

"Yeah, I do," Poe said. "You're a good pilot." 

Anakin had known that Poe had wanted him cleared for flight but he hadn't really considered being put on a mission quite so quickly. Then again he'd been here for several weeks and gotten consistently good reports from all of his flights - and he would have expected no less - but it was a little gratifying to see that maybe someone else had noticed. He took a step forward

"Also?" Poe looked over to Leia as if looking for permission to move forward and then he looked back at Anakin, straight in the eyes. "I could use a Jedi." 

The statement got Anakin's attention. "All right," he replied cautiously, glancing over at his mother. Whatever her opinion on this particular aspect of the mission, she was keeping the thoughts close to her chest.

"Well then," Leia nodded her head and as she did so several people stepped up towards the holo display. 

A tall woman with pale skin and greying hair stepped up next to Poe, and Zayna, the slicer that he'd met much earlier in his time here, a male Rodian, and a female Twi'lek who was perhaps just a few years older than he was filled the spaces between Poe, Leia, and Admiral Ackbar. 

Poe raised a hand to the tall woman and nodded. "Everyone, this is Anakin Solo, Jedi Knight. Anakin, this is Kae, Zayna you've met before I think. This is Sarik," the Rodian, "and Nir'mala," the Twi'lek female. "You all know me, so this is our team." 

Leia looked at each of them before she began to speak. "Resistance Intelligence has received reports that the First Order has been using an industrial facility on Raxus Prime as a front for gathering and creating material for their next move against the Republic" Leia pushed a button and the holoboard flickered to life with the Raxus system. "The company in question is Octab Industries,begun during the Empire's rule, granted to the Octab family who were, by self-admission, a support of Emperor Palpatine. It is rumored that they were provided the facility, which was once the property of a Separatist-sympathetic Industrial Barron during the Clone Wars, as a result of services rendered for the local Grand Moff."

"Whether that rumor is true or not," Admiral Ackbar looked at the system. "We believe they are currently supporting the First Order, whether by choice or persuasion is less clear." 

"But if they supported the Empire…?" the Twi'lek raised an eyebrow as she twitched one of her lekku. 

"We can suppose," the older woman said calmly. "But without any proof, which we are currently lacking, we must treat the owner and the employees with the benefit of any doubt they may receive." 

"Because of the already tense relationship between the Raxus system and the Republic does not wish to act on this knowledge directly, but wants us to send someone into investigate," Poe added. "The last thing they need is Octab Industries complaining that the Republic is operating outside of rule of law."

"So that's where we come in?" Zayna's words were crisp, and while she was covering pretty well, Anakin was pretty certain there was an undercurrent of annoyance as she stood in front of the holo-display, her arms crossed over her chest. 

"Exactly," Poe said with a nod. "We need to get into their facilities, and into their files, and we need to find evidence - hard evidence of the support they're giving to the First Order." 

"If we can find evidence that they provided material - particularly knowingly - to Starkiller, then we can perhaps give the Republic that is left the opportunity to move against them as compliant in the destruction of the Hosnian system." Ackbar's voice was grave as he looked at Zayna. 

"So we'll be looking for evidence of involvement in Starkiller, involvement in supporting the First Order currently, including any evidence that this is a front for current facilities - I can look for that if I can get on their network," Zayna said confidently. 

"That's the plan," Poe nodded at her. 

"We'll be taking a small yacht in system, posing as safety inspectors to gain access to the facility." 

"Won't that make them more likely to hide things?" Nir'mala protested. "If they're doing anything that isn't above board, they'll try to cover that up if they're being inspected." 

"Only if they know," the taller woman spoke quietly. "And only where the processing operations are concerned, they'll be less concerned about things like the money trails, which is what we're looking for." 

"Makes sense," Anakin nodded. "It's a slight of hand, you keep them looking at one hand, while you're actually digging somewhere else." 

"All right, so I'll be digging in the network," Zayna shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "I don't understand why we need a Jedi here. If we just need a pilot, there are plenty of those on base, and probably some that have more experience in our ships." 

The annoyance that had been simmering beneath the surface wasn't something that Anakin was imagining anymore, it was just barely concealed in her question, and it seemed to be directed to him for reasons unclear. Nor was he imagining the glances that were exchanged between Poe, Leia, and Ackbar. Zayna might not be aware of why they wanted him, but Anakin was suddenly certain: "You think the Force users behind the First Order may be here." 

The glances between the other members of their team told Anakin that it was possible not everyone was aware that there were Force users sided with the First Order. Fine, but he also wasn't interested in going into a mission where the entire team wasn't aware of the stakes going in. If they had a problem with that, then they could find another person for the team. It was the sort of attitude he would have had home, but here he found himself uncertain if it would be tolerated and questioning whether that was really how he felt. But no, he didn't feel like operating inside neat lines on this one. Particularly considering that he felt like his mother kept keeping bits and pieces of information from him. 

Leia turned and her steady brown eyes met Anakin's ice blue ones. "It's a long shot," she said quietly. "But it's the best lead we've had in months." 

"Wait, a minute," Zayna spoke. "You think there's some sort of Jedi here?"

"Dark Jedi," Anakin corrected. 

"Oh, right, of course, _Dark_ Jedi," Zayna's tone didn't suggest that she found that more acceptable than the other. "How do we even know Anakin here is what he says he is? Nobody has seen a Jedi for years now, and honestly it doesn't seem any more probable that there's a Dark Jedi here." 

"There is a Dark Jedi in the First Order," Leia said calmly, and she didn't seem put off by Zayna's skepticism or attitude. "Whether he is here or elsewhere is the only real question." 

"The Jedi do exist, Zayna," Kae's tone was as mild as Leia's. Although she was addressing Zayna, her eyes were on Anakin. "Just because you can't slice yourself into the Force to understand it better doesn't mean that it is a myth." 

Anakin pushed both hands to his hips and pushed away the skepticism he could feel from the young woman and instead drew his attention to the system map projected before them. He had anticipated more time to look into what had happened with his Uncle. He had hoped even to have time with his Uncle to better understand the Jedi and the Force in this galaxy. The knowledge that he should have had a sister and a brother in this universe as well, but that one of them had been kidnapped and the other killed by a dark Jedi - _the_ Dark Jedi they were talking about more than likely - left him a little worried. Everything he had faced at home - as horrendous as the monsters had been - they hadn't operated in the Force. Meeting up with a Dark Jedi first thing wasn't what he'd been anticipating. 

"You can turn it down," Leia said, watching him. "This isn't your home." 

The offer was polite, yet it almost felt like a test in and of itself. He stared at the system maps in silence for a moment more, long enough to see Zayna unfold her arms to stuff her hands in her pockets out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah it is," he returned, and turned his gaze from the maps to his mom. However much he might have missed parents that knew him, siblings that stood by him, Jedi he could fight beside, and his best friend, there was no clear way home again. This was home. "At least, it is now." 

Leia stepped back and Anakin kept his eyes on his mother even as Poe motioned to Kae to step forward and explain the situation further. 

"As mentioned before we will be posing as independent safety contractors out of Coruscant. They send safety reports to the New Republic, but are only concerned with safety," the older woman looked around the group. "Sarik and Nir'mala will be our inspectors. Sarik worked as a miner for a while, and will be able to use that background, as well as the information we provide en route, to run that masquerade. I will interview 'top staff', with Anakin and Zayna attending with me. Poe will run command, and control from the yacht in case we find we need to get out of there quickly." 

"Our location is a former droid factory," Poe zoomed the Holo into a planet surface map and he pointed to a facility built within to the side of the mountain. "As we mentioned, it was owned by a Separatist supporter during the Clone Wars, and was gifted, or as is on the books 'purchased' by Octab, who then turned it into a Duralium processing facility which it has been since Imperial days. They've passed every official check since the fall of the Empire, but recent sources are suggesting they're more to them. 

"We will be working out the specific details on the flight, but our goal is twofold: 1) to find out what is actually happening at the Octab Industries plant and where the money, and potentially exports are being fed, and 2) to determine whether or not there are any Force users in the system." 

"That may be easier said than done," Anakin said honestly. "It's possible to shield your presence using the Force. And if I use the Force to try to find them, then it may alert them to _my_ presence, which potentially endangers the entire team.But say that we do find them ... " He hesitated because saying he was not ready to face the person who murdered his sort of brother seemed like a bad thing to say, particularly when his mother had yet to even mention said brother. He looked over at Leia, who was watching him with a face that gave nothing away. He half-wished that she'd just get angry at him. Angry was at least an emotion and he would know what she was thinking then. "Say we find them. What then? Do we engage? I have no idea their level of expertise - it would be good to have another Jedi with me." 

"We can't wait for Luke," Leia said firmly, looking over at Anakin. "In terms of whether you engage or not - That will have to be your call on the ground. If we could remove him from power it would be a significant blow to the cohesiveness of the First Order." 

"If you have the opportunity to remove him from the picture," Admiral Ackbar said in his low voice. "You have our authority to act, absolutely." 

Anakin looked over at his mother, her face was giving nothing away, even to him. "I'm not murdering someone in cold blood," he said quietly. "I'm a Jedi, not an assassin. It's possible I might not even be able to. I'm still just barely a knight." Truthfully, he wasn't even certain he could count as a Knight, but here where there was nobody else around to confer with, Anakin had decided to just leave it simple when others had called him a Knight. It made him sympathise with his Uncle trying to restart a Jedi order from scratch.He allowed a steely edge into his voice. "And I want everything we know about this Force user."

Poe was also watching Leia who nodded. "I'll send it to your datapad. It's less than we would like." 

"Anything helps," Anakin said, and he hoped it would be true. 

\-- 

_The hallway was long. A full length of industrialized, impersonal, symmetrical architecture that lacked life of any variety. His steps were methodical, the expectation of something about to arrive pressed upon his chest. It was the Star Destroyers that he'd been on once upon a time, a long time ago, rarely but frequently enough to recognize the aesthetic even without tell-tale Imperial stormtroopers. Like Booster's ship, but flat and devoid of personality and life._

_He wasn't alone, but there was no one that could be watching him. The expanse of the hall gave away no cameras, no windows, and no beings. He shivered, turning back the direction he'd come as if he'd see someone stepping up behind him; someone watching his back walking away with eyes on him._

_The man himself came with the push of power. This was a familiar dream, even more than the familiarity of the hallways and the Imperial aesthetic. The whispers of power and bringing the galaxy peace and wisdom and the sort of immortality that he would never gain through the light. Of course stars lasted a long time, but the darkness was forever - the darkness was eternal._

_But this time the man in the mask wasn't him. This time the man in the mask stood at the end of the corridor, taller than Anakin would ever be, dark robes swirling around a determined stance, the mask at once Anakin's grandfather's and the promised mask of Anakin's own nightmares._

_He turned and they regarded each other and from behind the mask a voice echoed: "This is not your home."_

Anakin sat up in the silence of his own room, his heart beating rapidly, his breath coming more shortly than he appreciated it doing. He drew in a long breath to steady his heartbeat and the echo of the voice faded away from his memory just a little bit. Like everything else here, his dream - or was it a vision? - had taken on a slight distortion. The allure of the darkness and of power promised, but he wasn't wearing the mask. He let out a breath and sat in the silence of the room. Despite his meditative breathing, he could have sworn he could hear the voice once more like a whisper from a ghost. 

_This is not your home_

Anakin straightened his shoulders, reaching out into the Force through the silent room, but if there was something actually there it felt far blurry and far away. Instead he spoke, loudly, with confidence he didn't feel to repeat what he had told his mother earlier. His voice shattered the silence of the room leaving him feeling a bit ridiculous as he spoke: "It is my home now." 

\---

The yacht they were traveling in was a standard industrial yacht with small crew quarters and large cargo bays. This meant the six of them along with BB-8 were going to be largely on top of each other when they were sleeping, but fortunately the hop was no more than a few days and while the tightness of the crew quarters - six bunks one on top of each other, and one small additional room for the captain that Poe had given to Kae - meant that they wouldn't have any privacy to speak of in their bunk. 

Nir'mala had grumbled slightly about this, her blue lekku twitching around her, but Zayna had shrugged and simply taken the top bunk across from the one Anakin had climbed up onto. Each bunk had a small storage locker at the end of it, and Anakin had stuffed his small duffel into that. In all honestly, it was a short trip, and this was as much space as he'd had on the way to Myrkr. 

"I figured you'd just lift the duffel up with magic or whatever." 

Anakin closed the door to the locker and turned to look at Zayna who was watching him from across the small cabin. The comment had gathered Nir'mala's attention and she was looking up at him too. Even Sarik, the rodian sniper who had said a cumulative dozen words to Anakin thus far, was watching him. Anakin had felt Zayna's skepticism before, but right now he couldn't say if she was looking for proof that he could do it, or if she were mocking him, or if there was something else he couldn't quite pick out. 

"The Force isn't magic," he said, addressing mostly Zayna, but loudly enough that Nir'mala and Sarik could pick up on the words. "It's an energy field - it surrounds everything… well everything in this galaxy anyway." The Yuuzhan Vong had been a question Anakin had never really answered, and if they existed here - and he could only presume they might in some place outside of this galaxy - then likely they didn't exist in the Force here either. "What a Jedi can do flows from that, it's not _magic_ though, any more than your eyes picking up light and being able to use it to see things although that might seem magical to someone who didn't have that ability." 

"But you could pick up a duffel with it?" 

And at one point, Anakin knew he would have. He'd have lifted it up, left it on the bed to be dealt with later, and not worried about whether it looked showy. He would have used the Force to do what he'd just done using his own arms and muscles just like everyone else in the room had done. Somewhere in another galaxy his Aunt Mara was probably proud of him. 

"I could yeah," Anakin said. "But I didn't see any need to." 

"Of course you didn't," Zayna's comment felt scathing, but before Anakin had a chance to question her about it, she'd hopped down from the top bunk - a longer distance than Anakin would have expected her to have just jumped and she'd walked out the door throwing back over her shoulder:. "Commander Dameron said we needed to get ready for take-off." 

"She's in a mood," Nir'mala said with a smile and a shrug. "She clearly just needs to see what a real Jedi can do." 

Anakin followed Zayna's lead and hopped off his bunk. "She's not wrong that we all need to get ready for take-off though." 

She stepped through the door just in time to come face to face with Kae. The older woman was former Republic Intelligence, he knew, and while her grey eyes were not unfriendly, Anakin had the suspicion that he was her 'individual most in need of watching' on this mission and he couldn't help but feel some frustration. It was the same caution his mother seemed to direct towards him. 

"Is Commander Dameron in the cockpit already?" He asked her.

"He was looking for you," she said. "We've gotten the clear from base command." 

"Thanks," Anakin nodded and headed towards the cockpit. He'd been used to working on missions with teams he knew, largely, but that wasn't going to happen in this Universe for a while. He knew Poe, though, and had spent enough time with him, and that would have to do. Poe had handed him pre-flight system checks and Anakin was happy for the distraction, no matter how routine.

"We clear?" Poe asked after several moments of working together in a silence broken only by occasional checks from base comms. 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "BB-8 checked the coordinates, but you might double check the routes just to be certain I didn't miss any planet or system that's different from where I'm from."

"Hate to blast through an inconvenient star," Poe said good-naturedly as he pulled up the log. 

Anakin watched as Poe ran through the checks. It was the sort of thing he would have been offended by someone not trusting him to do at home, but he'd already realized as he studied some of the charts, that there were minor differences between this system and the one at home. They were very minor, but he wasn't about to take any chances that he'd missed something important. As it turned out, he hadn't and Poe had strapped his crash belt and finished the lift-off sequences to pull them out of the docking bay. 

Anakin had been off planet with some of the X-wing training he'd done, but this was the first time he was headed out of system and there was a relief to it in more than one way. While he'd anticipated directing his attention into studying the other pieces of his family here a bit more, the mission was honestly a welcome diversion from the immediate question of just what his relationship with his mother in this world might be. As Poe put them to lightspeed, and the familiar mottle of hyperspace filled in the view from the cockpit, Anakin turned his head to the older pilot. 

He'd come to realize through working with Poe that Poe was probably his best source of information on politics, the Resistance, and this galaxy at large. While he didn't think his mother had lied to him directly, she had omitted details - she hadn't mentioned anything about having had children and she'd mentioned Han's death only after he'd persisted. She seemed to mostly treat him cautiously, and it felt as if she wasn't the only one who was doing so. Poe on the other hand was open, inasmuch as he knew things to be open about, and Anakin had fast come to count on him as one of his few friends. 

"Can I ask you something?" 

"Sure," Poe flipped a switch on the navigation system to alert them if something out of the ordinary happened, and turned in his seat to face Anakin. 

Anakin shifted as well, frowning a little as he glanced back through the doorway that led into the hall down to the main hold. "Have you worked with Kae before?"

"A few times, but not quite so directly," Poe replied. "She worked with my mom back in the day, then she worked with the Republic, until, like me, she realized that there were things the Republic wasn't paying attention to, and that she could help with that. She was one of the founding members of the Resistance." He raised an eyebrow. "Why?" 

Anakin considered this information and shook his head. 'It's nothing important I don't think," he said quietly as he made the decision to go ahead and trust Poe with the sense he'd gotten. "She just seemed… suspicious? I guess is the right word." 

"Ah." 

"Ah?" 

Poe glanced back, and leaned forward towards Anakin, his elbows resting gently on the edge of the arms of his chair and his face earnest. "Not everyone trusts the Jedi, or Force sensitive people." 

"Is this about what happened with Uncle Luke and the training?" 

"Partially," Poe shrugged. "Part of it goes back further than that."

"The Empire's misinformation campaign?" 

"Among other things. The thing is most people haven't met a Jedi. Kae probably has. I know my Mother worked with Skywalker back during the Rebellion - she talked about him from time to time, especially when something had come up on the HoloNet. But he was supposed to be pulling together a new group of Jedi, and it went wrong because one - _one_ \- went bad. It's a lot of power," Poe's eyes darkened a little. "And anyone who has been up against it knows that it can be used against your average citizen. And those who haven't, well they hear rumors and misinformation from everyone else." 

Anakin pursed his lips together for a moment, and then let go of the initial frustration and tension that the seeming accusation presented. And as he did, he looked at Poe's face again. 

"You've been up against it," he said softly, before he even thought. And then as he did, he closed his eyes as he cursed that lack of thought. "Sorry, never mind it's not my business."

There was a long enough moment, that Anakin thought he might have angered Poe. Instead when he looked up, he saw only seriousness on the other man's face. He seemed to be wrestling with a decision and then have come to a conclusion. 

"I was a prisoner of the First Order a few months back. And I was interrogated by Kylo Ren," Poe said quietly. There was a moment where he paused and then he lifted dark eyes to meet Anakin's with intensity. "There were things he could do… I hadn't believed exactly. I'd heard the stories, but I'd never seen anything like that. I fired a blaster at him and he held it in mid-air -- Just held it. Just held it through the entirety of our conversation." 

Anakin realized as he watched Poe talking that Kae's suspicion mattered less than Poe's faith in him did. But it did remind him that he'd spent so long fighting without the Force, using the absence of it in an opponent, that fighting someone who could utilize the Force and command it as a tool and a weapon, was something he didn't know if he was really truly ready for. 

"You said you were interrogated by him?"

"Yeah." 

Poe did look away now and Anakin followed his lead, turning his eyes to the viewport and allowing Poe some privacy. The unease in the room was palpable. 

"He was in my head," Poe said finally. 

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Anakin said quietly. "I know it's probably the last thing you want to talk about-"

"It is, but it might be useful for you." 

Anakin looked over and met Poe's look with a hesitant and sad smile. "Yeah, it might be. If we find him here - I'm strong, and I'm well trained, but I've no idea what his abilities are."

"Let me think about what would be most useful," Poe said quietly. "We'll talk before we get there. In the meantime, Kae's fair. She'll give you a chance, but she may not entirely trust you. Not sure she entirely trusts anyone, to be honest." 

"I'll just have to give her a reason to trust me then," Anakin nodded, was quiet for a moment and then tilted his head. "And Zayna?" 

Pod chuckled. "I think Zayna's just a skeptic." 

"Skeptics I can deal with."

"That I'll believe," Poe's grin was easy again. "Thanks Anakin, and hey - your take-off prep? Textbook, couldn't have done it much better myself." 

Anakin grinned back at Poe as he unhooked his crash belts. "Next time I'll be pilot and you can be co-pilot," he teased, as he half-saluted him and left the cabin.


	6. Chapter 6

The conversation with Poe had given Anakin a background against which to put all of his interactions whether with Poe, or Kae, or even Zayna the skeptic. Along with many of the differences between his galaxy and this onemwere similarities too and he continued being brought face to face with them. It was not unlike what had happened as he trekked across Yavin IV with several Jedi trainees, a former Peace Brigade pilot, a former Imperial, and even a shamed Yuuzhan Vong warrior, or as he had when walking among the Undercity on Coruscant with his Aunt. In all cases he was facing the knowledge that the life he had taken for granted and the beliefs that he held as important simply weren't understood well by the rest of the galaxy. This knowledge left him with two options - he could get angry and feel frustrated or misunderstood or put-upon. Or he could step forward and try to live what he wanted them to know and try to give them the chance to understand. 

At home while there were still large portions of the galaxy that didn't know Jedi personally there were many who had watched Luke Skywalker and his earlier Jedi Knights do much good for the Republic. Until the Yuuzhan Vong war Anakin had felt that people had seen the Jedi as heroes. Or maybe that had been a certain amount of naïveté - of simply not understanding the dynamics in the galaxy at large. Regardless, recently he'd more and more come face-to-face with that reality. 

True to his word Poe had sat down with Anakin and had detailed his time with the First Order including his encounters with the man known as Kylo Ren. It had not been a particularly comfortable conversation for either of them, but at the end of it Anakin had a better understanding of what Kylo Ren's known abilities might be. Some of them, like the ability to simply hold a blaster bolt in mid-air for long periods of time, felt showy and unnecessary to the extreme, while others like the ability to dig into someone's brain were familiar, if used in ways that smacked of the Dark side. Once again Anakin was grateful for how easily Poe had accepted him despite the fact that he knew Anakin had these abilities. When this acceptance was pushed up against the caution displayed by Kae and the outright, almost hostile, skepticism displayed by Zayna it felt all the more extraordinary. 

The travel time to Raxus Prime had been broken up into shifts and the team used this time to work together to come into a plan. While Poe was technically the commander and leader of the mission, Kae was working as their operational ground leader with her background in Republic Intelligence coming in handy as they built their identities and how they would work together to infiltrate the base. 

About twelve hours out from the Raxus Prime system Anakin joined Kae and Zayna over protein bars and a bottle of some sort of energy juice. The two were in conversation when he joined them and Anakin couldn't help feel a spike of jealousy at the easy respect Zayna seemed to offer Kae as neither of them seemed to be quite so courteous to him, but he swallowed the frustration as he sat down and instead offered them both a quick smile and an open posture.

Kae looked over at him and began speaking without preamble. "Zayna and I have been discussing how we're going to figure out the export and money question and you will answer the other piece of this - the question of whether or not this Force user behind the First Order is in this system. Sarek, Nir'mala, and I are largely acting as distraction and back-up, which means the two of you will need to work together to get to the heart of what we need to answer." 

"Understood," Anakin nodded as Kae's eyes seemed to hold on his face. 

"Zayna is going to gain access to the networks to review safety incidents and reports. Once there she will use her abilities to slice into other areas in the network. We'll both be transferring that data back to the ship via an interface with BB-8, as well as hopefully pulling it onto a secret storage disc in her datapad giving us something additional to return to the Resistance with. The two of you will start out with me," Kae projected a holo of the facilities known layout up. "We'll be working in the main offices here, but my primary goal is to keep the higher-ups completely occupied while you two work with the network." 

"And the Force user?" Anakin asked. 

"You can't just do some sort of magical voo doo?" Zayna suggested. 

"That's not how the Force works," Anakin raised an eyebrow at her. "I mean, sure I can sense if people are nearby, unless they're shielding themselves. Think of it this way - you work with tech, you're aware of hidden drives and space you may not be able to see immediately. This is like that, only with the Force. And if someone is shielding I may not be able to pick it up. Alternatively, if they aren't shielding, and I go looking for them in the Force then they may know I'm here which will clue them in that they need to be looking for me. What we need is to look within the data we're gathering in the network for a sign of something more." 

"Like what?" 

"Like… space that isn't designated for any particular purpose, older areas of the factory that are marked as not in-use? Supplies being routed somewhere that doesn't make any logical sense - in other words, let's try to solve this without the Force."

"What is the point even then?" Zayna threw back at him. "If you've got a tool in your bag, why not use it?" 

Anakin found himself looking at Kae who had remained remarkably quiet throughout this exchange. For a moment he pressed his lips together and looked down and when he finally looked back up it was with the corners of his lips turned up slightly. "You sound like me," he told her. 

"What?" Zayna sat back in her chair and frowned at him. "What does that mean?" 

"I mean, a few years ago," he explained. "I always saw the Force as a tool, something you could pull on if you needed to move a duffle bag to the top bunk, or break down a wall. My Aunt," he looked over at Kae briefly. "She taught me a lesson about knowing what can be done without the Force, knowing what I'm capable of without ever needing to pull on it. Yes, I have the Force, and yes, if I need to I'll use it - but I don't want to rely on it when we may be able to pull data to answer the question without it." 

"I'm not a data analyst I just get the data," Zayna said pointedly. " _She's_ the data analyst unless you've got another secret skill set I don't know about." 

"No, but I _can_ do puzzles, and I can look for patterns. We'll make it work, and the Force allows for good instincts sometimes." 

"So you'll both be set up at a computer terminal, her to the system, you with the actual cover of being the person analyzing the reports she accesses," Kae's lips turned up in a smile now too. "I'll give you both as long as I can. If necessary, but only if necessary, we'll have contact via commlinks - they've an encrypted signal that will be difficult for someone to disrupt - but not impossible so use care when talking over them."

Anakin and Zayna each took the commlinks and nodded. 

"We're pretty good on the plan currently?" Kae asked, looking between them both. 

"I think as good as we're going to get," Anakin said. 

"Good, well, may the Force be with us." 

Coming from Kae the statement made Anakin feel a little warmer despite the fact that he couldn't help but feel that she was still cautious. Maybe there was hope here that the team he was working with would come to trust his abilities, and that the people he was working with in this Resistance would equally come to know what being a Jedi really stood for. He looked up and offered Kae a smile as she unfolded to her full height and straightened up before heading for the cockpit. 

He was left alone with Zayna who had a datapad in her hands and was looking at him. Anakin ignored the look and instead reached for his own datapad, to review the information for the facility that they had been given as 'independent inspectors'. The better he knew what they were providing to the public, the better he would be able to parse any differences that showed up between what Zayna was able to pull up. _If_ there were differences. Kae had seemed satisfied with his answer, but Anakin wasn't certain that he would be able to answer this second question. And if he did, would he even like the answer? If he did stumble across a Dark side Force user, what was he going to be able to do? 

"What is the point of being a Jedi if you don't use your magic powers?" 

Anakin looked up at Zayna's question and didn't bother hiding the sigh. "As I mentioned before they aren't magic powers." 

"Whatever they are why not use them?" 

"I didn't say I wouldn't use them," Anakin pointed out trying to keep his tone even. "I just said that I thought we should try other methods first. Besides which, you don't seem to be able to make up your mind whether the powers are real and I have them, or they're a bunch of bantha shit that I just made up for attention." He breathed in and pressed his lips together. Okay, maintaining calm didn't seem to be working out so well. "The thing is, that the Force can give me better insight if I'm not using it constantly." 

Zayna pushed a dark curl behind her ear and narrowed her brown eyes at him. "That doesn't even make sense." 

"Yes, it does," Anakin said quietly. "Say someone is whispering in your ear trying to explain to you how you can slice into these Imperial codes, but you've chosen to try to slice into the Imperial codes by using a loud drill to get into the computer panel. Are you going to be able to hear the whisper in your ear?"

"You're saying just looking for someone using your mystical energy field is like using a loud drill to get in a computer panel?" 

"When you put it like that, it sounds a little crazy, but yes, basically. Look, I get that you don't really believe in the Force, and I'm guessing you've never had any reason to come in contact with someone who uses it, and that's fine. But I will say this - being a Jedi? It isn't just about waving your hand to block a blaster bolt, or getting someone to spill a secret. Being a Jedi is about how you interact with beings and with life in this galaxy, all life. It's a philosophy that could be lived without ever really touching the Force in a traditional way. When I say I'm a Jedi, then it's because I believe in the value and connection of life in the universe and that core belief then impacts everything else I do -- _including_ how I use the Force." 

"You're saying you don't have to be able to access the Force to be a Jedi," Zayna's voice dripped skepticism at this pronouncement. 

Anakin considered and then nodded. "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. When I was a boy, and I was training with Uncle Luke at the Praxeum he had on Yavin IV, there was a kid, Uldir, that showed up, believed he could be a Jedi - he wanted to be a hero. He… didn't have Force sensitivity, not really enough to do anything with, but Uncle Luke let him stay, let him take the classes, he believed that he could learn without the ability to lift boxes. He respected that the journey and the practice could bring its own wisdom. And I learned - from my Uncle - that being a Jedi wasn't about being a hero and wasn't about being able to make a lightsaber - the guiding principles under-gird more than just our use of the Force." 

"Huh. Fine. Well, I need to dig into this and figure out what sort of system I'm going to be dealing with so…" 

Anakin could clearly sense the dismissal so he stood up. He didn't know if Zayna understood any of it any better than she had. Perhaps as it had ended up ultimately with Uldir she wasn't really interested in learning anything about the Jedi. Instead she was more interested in proving the entire concept of the Force wrong. Well, she would be disappointed, but Anakin wasn't going to use the Force simply to prove that it existed and that he could control it. He wasn't a magician, and it wasn't a magic trick. 

Initially he'd intended to take himself back to the cabin to sleep a few hours before going into the mission, but he found himself instead in the back cargo bay. It was one of the few times he'd managed to find himself alone during the past few hours, and the solitude was a relief in and of itself. With six people and a droid on a yacht that was intended to have a crew no larger than that it was difficult to find any solitude, and for all Anakin liked people, he needed quiet to gather his thoughts, and the number of people and the persistent friendship that Nir'mala had offered him - asking him questions about the Jedi, and what his life at home was like, and being a Solo - had meant that he'd been granted very little of it. He didn't mind exactly, Nir'mala's enthusiasm being slightly more exhausting than Poe's quiet faith in him, but he respected it and was glad to provide her real knowledge about the Force and the Jedi from someone who understood it. 

But he also needed to think over what he'd learned from Poe, and what he might be going up against. In the silence of the bay Anakin stepped into a meditation stance as he stared at a small viewport in the side of the bay. Kylo Ren had strong abilities in mental telepathy. He'd used the ability to push into Poe's mind in ways that Anakin could tell had shaken the pilot. For all Poe was putting on a brave front, having his mind invaded that way - well, it was symbolic of the lack of respect for human beings that the First Order had, and in particular Kylo Ren had, and the information was making him think about _how_ he would need to relate to Kylo Ren should he stumble across him, or perhaps worse the Snoke that his mother had referred to. 

At home, Anakin had always had a strong connection with his family, but particularly with his siblings and his parents. He was able to feel them when they came into proximity with each other, or if there was a strong emotion. He'd remembered being on Yavin IV and feeling Jaina passing near enough to become like a bright star crossing the horizon and moving out of view. He knew that if something had happened to any of them the others would have known. Here that had changed. He could still sense his mother's presence but it was dimmer, and what he couldn't decide was whether or not it was because she hadn't had the training in the Force that his mother had home had invested time into, or if it was because she was just enough different from the Leia that he knew and that he did not know her that made the difference. He had tried searching for his Uncle several times without any success. So, he didn't have that connection, or that ability to sense family over the distances he might have been able to do at home. 

But what was more important here was that he had the ability to block Kylo Ren should he come into contact with him. Thus he began running through a series of exercises, with a burst of longing for his brother or his sister to be there to push him. Either Jacen or Jaina could have pushed at the barriers he put up more than any stranger would have been able to do - even the strongest of Sith, because they knew his weaknesses better than anyone else. 

Or Tahiri. 

The thought of the blonde Jedi distracted him and his mind wandered off of the current mission to home. The bond that he and Tahiri had built over many years of training together, and when they'd kissed, it had been one of the most amazing moments of his life, and he'd spent most of the past few weeks trying not to think about home, or what might be happening there. Had he disappeared from there? It seemed likely. They would all be mourning him… thinking he was dead, and when he thought of it, it was Tahiri for whom he hurt the worst. She hadn't given him the kiss, she'd made him promise to come back, and he'd wanted to believe he would do so even if he'd known that it might be impossible. 

And this - he didn't know if he would be able to do this. Poe had requested him on this mission and his mother seemed to have agreed with it, and particularly because they believed their might be a chance of finding Kylo Ren. But unlike his Uncle, Anakin's fight against the dark side had never taken the form of a specific individual. Was he capable of guarding himself against influence? Was he capable of keeping a Sith, or whatever Kylo Ren might be, out of his mind? And if not, what would he find there? 

Anakin pushed back against what he'd found out about Kylo Ren. He was tall, he wore a mask, similar to Vader's, Poe had said. Anakin couldn't help but wonder if the dream he'd had earlier had been a vision. If so, of where? The location hadn't felt like Raxus Prime, which he knew was an industrialized wasteland in many respects. He'd never been there, he'd only heard the rumors, seen the pictures. He'd been twelve, shortly after the treaties with the Empire were signed, that a burst of New Republic Senators had been elected into office on promises to help clean up and make more usable for the Republic planets like Raxus Prime that had been neglected and abandoned by the Empire. Duro, Raxus Prime, they had been on the holonet near daily. The subject of reporting on factory, Imperial leftovers, the blame the Empire had for these sorts of burdens to the galaxy, the nearly unanimously non-human population that had to live in masks and behind bubbles to stay on the planets. It was dreadful, and the human senators had done nothing yet. 

Of course, outside of the talk on the holonet, very little had actually happened. Thus why Duro had still been a wasteland when he was sixteen, and when it had ultimately fallen to the Yuuzhan Vong it had been a loss only because of the number of refugees that had been in the population on the planet living in bubbles to survive the harsh atmosphere and deadly fumes planetside, and the destruction of the city stations orbiting the planet. 

When the conversation had first happened it had felt like politics as usual, although now Anakin wondered if it wasn't a sign of the cracks within the New Republic that would begin to fracture apart wildly with the appearance of the extragalactic aliens. Had they realized then could they have created a stronger Republic? It was a question that maybe didn't matter here, except that Anakin could see cracks here too. Those in the galaxy who believed in freedom and liberty, those that wanted to be cared for, those that wanted to be kept safe, and those that wanted to be left alone. In the destruction of the Hosnian system the First Order had blown those cracks open, and there were arguments over whether you should fight the First Order, or try to make peace with them, and the arguments sounded the same to Anakin, a remix of the Holonet at home with different voices, different details, but the same arguments. 

The main difference here was the lack of a Jedi to serve as saviors. 

Or as scapegoats. 

Anakin found that his thoughts had begun to circle in a way that was not helpful and he pulled them to a halt, instead drawing his breath in and focusing his meditation on the idea of a star. Light - spreading out through the darkness of a galaxy and that one star could light a system, and reach as far as distant galaxies. Despite the darkness that might surround it the impact of one star could not be overlooked. 

As a Jedi, he could shine light - and maybe his system was small, it was one team, it was a handful of people that he lived with daily - but maybe that light shone out further than he could ever fathom. Despite the skepticism and caution he was granted with and the way it was forcing him to refine his beliefs and how he practiced on a day to day basis and what he assumed that people knew or did not, Anakin still believed in the good of the Jedi and of the light. He could no more deny that than he could the darkness from his heritage, and the possibility of darkness within him. It was that belief that had kept him going on Myrkr, and had made him believe that he could keep his team going, that whatever had to be done and whatever of his hopes and dreams he had to sacrifice, it would be worth it if the Jedi were still standing to shine a light in the galaxy.

In the quiet of the cargo bay, Anakin could take that belief and pour it into the Force, to internalize it in a way that he hoped would be enough to keep him through all of this whatever might come. Master Ikrit had told him before he died, that he held anger inside, and Anakin couldn't help but wonder if Master Ikrit were here, would he see something similar? Was he still holding his anger inside like a crucible that would burn him eventually? 

If there was anger Anakin couldn't find it today and so he pulled himself out of the Meditation and stared out of the viewport for a moment in silence, his thoughts on his Uncle. If anything he wished he was able to speak to him. For all Poe had offered him knowledge of this galaxy, for all his mother had largely accepted him if not welcomed him, Anakin knew he would be able to learn something from his Uncle. He always had. Uncle Luke had offered him a vision of what Anakin wanted to be like when he grew up. 

_That's why you haven't seen him yet._ The thought turned over in his head and he crossed his arms over his chest as he buried into it. _You haven't seen him because you need to form your own vision of what sort of Jedi you will be without his shadow in your way. It is time._

He protested that he needed guidance even as he recognized that with his previous training and the Force he had the tools and knowledge that he needed. Over the past few weeks he had been determining how to represent the Jedi and it had very little to do with what his Uncle might have presented - it was what he, Anakin Solo, believed in. It represented the best - he hoped - of what the Jedi could be. And in places, that vision had departed from his Uncle's, or from his brother's, or from what he knew had been presented by Tionne or the Holocrons he had learned from. 

"I am a Jedi like my grandfather before me," Anakin's words were barely above a whisper. 

"Coming out of hyperspace in ten," Dameron's voice broke Anakin's concentration from the commlink on his belt. "Solo need you in the cockpit." 

Anakin pulled his attention from the meditation and instead reached for the small round device. "I'm on my way." 

Even from space there was nothing particularly appealing about Raxus Prime. 

Anakin watched the planet shoot into the space in front of them as they cut the engines. The planet itself was a drab brown color over the entire sphere. Once an industrialized planet, it had been mined, factories had been built and abandoned, and as economies had fallen after the Clone Wars, it had been left with industrial waste, rotting duracrete and empty, but not properly closed mines leaking toxicity onto the planet at large. Anakin checked systems from the co-pilot's chair, as Poe responded to a hail from the planet. 

"Hello Octab Control, This is Captain Ronn with Draxis Consultants. We're here for an inspection of Octab Industries, our access code is A-562-JTSA." 

There was a moment's wait and Anakin and Poe shared a look as they waited. 

"Very good Captain Ronn, please proceed to Octab Landing Bay 5 for further instructions." 

"So far, so good," Poe muttered. 

"You know, if you had to pull me out on a mission, you could have taken me somewhere nice, like I don't know, Coruscant, or Naboo, or the Hapes Consortium or something other than the galaxy's trash compactor." 

"No one goes to the Hapes Consortium," Dameron shook his head at Anakin with a chuckle.

"They're closed off in this galaxy too?" 

"Not much interested in galactic politics," Poe said as he flew them lower into atmosphere. "Wait, you said some place nice - have you been there?"

"Yeah, one of my friends and fellow Jedi was the Princess," Anakin said softly wondering as he did so if Tenel Ka existed in this galaxy, or if she - like Anakin himself, Jacen, and Jaina - had never been born. "Dathomir's a little wild, but some of the system is pretty." 

"Well, huh. You been to Raxus before?" 

Anakin shook his head. "There was a large political movement to clean up planets shortly after we wrote the treaty with the empire. I was 12 or so, but I've only ever seen it on the Holonet." 

"Approaching yacht, please declare your access code." 

Poe keyed up the comm system and repeated the access code and name of the ship along with why they were there. 

"You're cleared for landing in Bay 5 - platform 87." 

"Thanks, Octab," Poe said easily and he took them in. 

Bay 5 was about halfway down a large mountain spire. Octab Industries and the droid factory that it had once contained, were built into a mountain with landing bays, built out or in some cases it seemed they were built into the mountain itself. Anakin watched the entire area as they approached reaching out in the Force tentatively to see if he could feel anything, but it was silent - maybe eerily so. If someone was here, they were hiding, and hopefully that meant they would not have noticed Anakin either. 

"All right," Poe said as he powered down a lot of the ship's functions, leaving a base-line that would allow them to take off more quickly if it were needed. "You're clear to catch up with the others. May the Force be with you."


	7. Chapter 7

They were met on the platform by a tall, thin humanoid with a pale green skin who introduced himself as Dar'raa'las, the head of Octab Industry Safety Resources. Two security officers with him were sent to review the _Diamond Star_ to insure compliance with docking procedures. Kae and Dar'raa'las met, Kae introduced each of them with the false identification that they had taken on, and then Kae turned smartly on her heel to follow Dar'raa'las across the platform and into the facility. 

From there the five safety inspectors were given an audience with several department heads. Anakin noted that Dar'raa'las was the only non-human in the group, and his humanoid appearance that Anakin didn't recognize made him wonder if the man was at least partially human in his DNA. It wasn't a terrible surprise to see a boardroom of only humans in an organization that had once supported the Empire, nor was it a terrible surprise to see Sarik and Nir'mala continually overlooked in the conversation and questions that followed. 

The Network Officer pulled Zayna aside and when she returned she turned to Anakin. "We'll need to begin reviewing data now." 

Kae looked at the two of them and then looked at Dar'raa'las. "I would like to request a quiet office for these two to review the files that you have provided them access to. Additionally I would like for our inspectors to begin the facility inspection unless you have additional information for them at this meeting?" 

Dar'raa'las shook his head and managed to appear as if he was looking down his nose at Sarik despite the fact that he was currently seated, and Sarik was taller than him in the seat. "No, there are two security officers outside the door who will accompany them on their facilities inspection. They have orders to provide unfettered access to our plant. We wish there to be no confusion regarding our commitment to safety Ma'dam. Many people have a negative impression of Raxus Prime, but we do our utmost to continue a safe, thorough, and clean operation here." 

"So we shall see," Kae said in a non-committed tone. "You are all dismissed. Dar'raa'las and I will continue to review the sensitive information together." 

Sarik and Nir'mala had stood with Dar'raa'las' words and now made their way with the security officers at the door. Anakin looked over at Zayna and stood as well as she followed him. 

Dar'raa'las looked at the two of them. "Maka here will provide you with the place to work that you desire." 

If Dar'raa'las had struck Anakin as unfriendly and stern, Maka gave almost the impression of being unable to speak. The woman said nothing to either him nor Zayna as she led them down the hall and he glanced over at Zayna who rolled her eyes briefly. He wondered if it was because of who they were and what they were doing, or if she just simply didn't speak much. 

Maka stopped them in front of what appeared to be a durasteel door that was carved out of the mountain itself. She keyed in a code before the door slid open with the hiss of mechanics and hydraulics. 

The room she led them into was a pre-Imperial era command room, large enough that Anakin suspected at one time it may have been a main control area for this particular base prior to the Clone Wars when things had fallen apart for the original manufacturers and before it had been turned over to the Octab family as a prize for maintaining Imperial favor. It was spacious and would have been well outfitted for a control room of forty or fifty years prior but at least one control panel was modern within the past decade if Anakin were guessing accurately. 

"Your connections are there," Maka spoke with the efficiency of a droid and the flatness of a droid with no personality simulator. "There is a table there for you to do your work. Please use the comm on the table to call when you have completed the work here. Do you require anything additional?" 

From her tone Anakin wasn't certain he would dare ask, but thankfully Zayna seemed capable of matching it as she sat her datapad down. "No. We will contact you if it seems we are missing something important." 

If Maka disliked Zayna's tone, it didn't appear on her face. Instead she stared at her for a moment and then turned on her heel with the precision of a foot-soldier and marched from the room. 

"I feel like she's taking the whole Imperial support thing, all too seriously," Anakin said quietly after the door had hissed leaving the two of them in the room together. 

"I've met prison droids with more personality," Zayna pulled out a chair and sat down in it as she pulled out her datapad. "All right, get your datapad out and let's get to work." 

Anakin slid into the seat across from her and pulled out his own datapad. As Zayna began to send information to him for him to review, Anakin did a sweep of the facility with the Force - cautiously, specifically being careful in case he stumble across someone that might recognize his presence for what it is. He frowned as he prodded this level - there were beings here, mainly human unless he were very mistaken but none that felt significant in the Force. He didn't share this with Zayna, knowing she might not believe him if he did say it, and knowing as well that there was the possibility the room was bugged. 

Instead he turned his attention to the data she was providing him. The data was specifically looking for ties to the shipping and the money, the ties to the First Order that they had been assigned to try to find. Anakin focused his use of the Force in on these things and the puzzle that the numbers and data pieces were a part of. These numbers and data were being gathered from behind the scenes using a program on his datapad that Zayna had put together. 

The program would run through data, looking for anomalies which were presented on Anakin's datapad for him to review. He had to be impressed at the fact that Zayna, having very little real information to go on, had managed to build a program that could look at the complexities of the data on the network - including some files that Anakin knew were heavily encrypted - and be able to analyse them carefully. Perhaps Poe hadn't been joking about her being the best slicer in the New Republic, but this went even beyond that and suggested a knowledge of programming and mechanical interaction that was significantly above average. It was a skill Anakin could certainly respect, and he intended on giving her no reason to doubt his ability to puzzle out any problems from the data she'd given him. He sat in silence as he watched the files, separating out pieces that looked more essential than not. 

How long they had sat like this, Anakin wasn't certain - it was long enough that he was vaguely aware of the fact that his thighs were somewhat sore and he shifted positions as Zayna took a quick breath in. 

_Wait_. 

Anakin glanced up to realize that no matter how loudly he'd heard the voice in his head, Zayna had said nothing. He frowned and glanced down at the datapad, but nothing unusual stood out at him. He looked back up at Zayna: "Are you..."

On the datapad in front of him popped up schematics. At first glance they were merely updated schematics of the ones that had been filed during Imperial days, and in subsequent inspection visits by the New Republic. But as he looked at them, very aware of Zayna's eyes on him, he began to see what she was seeing. 

Beneath them were caverns that had not been on the schematics - labeled only with numbers it was completely unclear what they were being used for, but the active docking bays in them suggested they were being used for something. 

"I cut the cameras." 

"What?" 

"The cameras to this room, and the ones on the outside - they're all looped, we have about five minutes to decide whether or not we're going to go figure out what they're doing down there."

Anakin looked at the datapad, and it didn't take him more than a four count to push himself to his feet, the datapad sliding back into the pocket of the jacket that he had. "You said you'd looped the cameras outside?"

"Yeah." 

Anakin pushed through the door, using the Force to check for anyone on the floor. 

"There are two guards on the stairwells that way," he told her quietly. 

"How do you know that?" She looked at him, and then made a face, rolling her eyes. "Oh, right, Jedi magic. But I could have told you that from the camera feeds," she held up the datapad in front of her and Anakin glanced back at her. 

"Why did you yell at me back there." 

"What?" Zayna was already making her way down the hall opposite the stairwell, her eyes on the datapad in front of her, and her fingers moving occasionally across it as she moved. "I didn't say anything." 

"Yes you did, you said 'wait', and it feels like that wasn't entirely smart if there were cameras -" 

She'd turned around and was staring at him. "You heard that." 

"Of course I heard it."

"I didn't say it, Anakin. I _thought_ it," she pressed her lips together and narrowed her gaze. "You're in my head." 

Anakin looked at her. "You - thoug-"

"Yep," Zayna glared at him and threw the accusation again: "You're in my head. That's not cool."

"You know when you yell something at someone you have to expect they're going to overhear it," Anakin snapped back feeling more defensive than he really ought to have under the circumstances. But he hadn't been trying to read Zayna's thoughts at all, nor was it something that he was automatically particularly great at. Zayna did seem genuinely surprised as he spoke, but Anakin didn't give her time to think about it: "Will this stairwell take us down? We only have so much time before someone notices this feed is looped or someone comes by here." 

"Can't you just erase their memories of us or something If they do?" 

"Only if they're sentient. If they're droids, that's your area." 

Zayna's cheek twitched. 

"And I'd rather not have to," Anakin added, feeling as if the addendum ought to be unnecessary, but somehow Zayna made him feel as if he needed to add it.

 _Get a grip, Solo,_ he told himself evenly. _Stop jumping because she's snapping at you._

Zayna wasn't particularly paying attention but was instead running lock codes against the door to the stairwell, which appeared to be an employee only exit. 

"This doesn't go all the way down," Anakin pointed out as he looked at the datapad over her shoulder. "It'll only take us part way." 

"There has to be something that's not on there…" The door slid open and Zayna quickly stood up to step through it, motioning for Anakin to follow her. A quick glance of the stairwells showed that it didn't have visible cameras - for better or worse. 

"You look," Zayna said. "I'm not used to reading schematics like this, in the meantime we start down." 

"Quietly," Anakin suggested, as her voice echoed throughout the stairwell. 

Zayna glared, but didn't say anything as she started down the staircase as quietly as her boots would allow her to do.

Anakin followed after her, also moving as quietly as he could. Probably he could dampen the sound of their movements in the Force, but for right now he left it, instead moving his fingers over the schematics. "Here," he said softly. "This level." 

"This one?" 

Anakin stopped and looked at the number over the door. "If it's clear, yeah." 

"What are we looking for?" 

"No people," Anakin shot back. 

"Great, I've got a Jedi smart ass at my back," Zayna quipped. "Something not amazingly obvious to anyone with a brain please?" 

"Well, I thought the lift service that was no longer in use would have been amazingly obvious," Anakin responded. 

"Let me see that," Zayna pulled the datapad back into her fingers and looked at it. "It's not functional," she pointed out as the stood just out of view of the window in the durasteel door. "Look - see here. We'll have to figure out something else." 

"But it does go down all the way?"

Zayna looked up at him with a guarded gaze. "Yeah, why?" 

"All right, come on." Anakin stepped over to the door. "Do your unlocking thing." 

"What are you going to do?" Zayna protested, but she had stepped forward to slice the lock code, and as the door slid open, the two of them stepped into a mostly empty corridor. 

Anakin stepped forward into the corridor. "All right keep quiet - there are people nearby, but I don't think any of them are coming this way." 

"What are you going to do?" Zayna persisted as she kept her fingers flying over the datapad as she moved to follow him down the corridor towards the lift in question. 

"I'm going to float us down the lift shaft," Anakin answered the question as he paused, glancing up the hallway. "There's cameras there." 

"Give me a second."

"Aren't they going to notice you're on their network where you shouldn't be?"

"No, I rerouted one of their main proxies through one of mine, and it's showing up as theirs. Unless they've got someone really good on systems it'll be a while before they're likely to notice." 

"And if they do have someone good?" 

"No one's as good as me," Zayna grinned at him. "Camera's down, let's go." 

"Are you always this arrogant?" 

"Says the man who just declared he was going to float us down the lift shaft," Zayna countered. "Which is absolutely mad by the way. Completely insane. Do you have a rope hidden under those robes?" 

Anakin stopped in front of the lift and turned to look at her, a half grin crossing his face despite the moment. "Just open the doors okay?" He looked down the corridor. "Quickly," he added, the grin fading into something more urgent. 

"Are there people coming?"

"Yeah, just hurry - if we get caught down here, it won't be good for the others either." 

"You're not serious about this. You have a rope, right?" Zayna turned her attention to the control panel. 

"No." 

"You can't be serious about the floating thing…" 

"I am, and I can. I've done it before." 

Zayna stepped back as the lift doors slid open. "I'm not jumping down a lift shaft on some ill conceived notion that you can just drop us down quietly." 

Anakin ignored the protest and stuck his head in carefully to check on the lift. It was below them, which was probably preferable to it being above them - probably. It wouldn't be good either way if Zayna was wrong about this lift no longer being operational, but he'd just have to pay attention. 

"Kriff," Zayna muttered as her head appeared next to Anakin's. "Did you hear me? I'm not jumping down a lift shaft." 

From down the corridor where they'd just came, Anakin heard the sound of a door sliding open and the sound of voices growing louder as they came down that same corridor. He knew the two of them had seconds before whomever it was hit the T section where the lifts were located. He looked over at Zayna: "Do you trust me?" 

"Are you crazy? I don't even believe you Jedi can do this shit," she hissed.

"That's why you called 'wait' in my head," Anakin threw back at her earnestly, his tone low to avoid it floating down the corridor. "And it worked. It worked because we can do this, and I think you believe more than you're letting on. I've done this drop before," he added. "At least one very similar. And we don't have time to discuss it," he reached out and slid the datapad into her pocket. "Jump." 

"I can't -"

Voices that felt like they were all too near made Anakin look up and still not seeing anyone, he didn't wait to see if she was going to jump, or if the voices would appear in a moment, instead he looped one arm in hers and pressed his back to hers, before looping the other arm through her other one locking their backs together in the entry. "Trust me," he said softly as he stepped them both over the edge of the lift, thankful that Zayna somehow had the presence of mind (and perhaps just enough trust) to not scream. 

While it was true that Anakin had done this sort of jump before, it had been with his best friend and fellow Jedi student, Tahiri - and the two of them had been working together - countering the fall with each other and the Force. This was just him. Him and someone else who's life was depending upon him to be able to find that balance between them and the air rushing past them, and the walls and the floor that approached way too quickly. 

He pulled on the Force pressing his back into hers, and as he concentrated into it, it clicked - that moment where he could sense the walls, the floor, the air around him, slowing both of them down with resistance. The fall felt controlled, and he could push his feet off the walls, pushing the idea of it to Zayna in her mind and she surprised him when he felt the push off of the other wall. No longer so fast, he had managed to slow them enough, using the Force to lessen their fall despite the gravity pulling them downwards. And when they hit the top of the lift below them it was hard, but not life threatening. 

"Ouch, kriff," Zayna muttered, stumbling forward, and nearly pulling him over on top of her as she landed. Anakin pulled out in an attempt to disentangle himself from her and nearly landed face first in the side of the wall. When she looked around at him, her hair had flown out of the knots she'd been wearing framing her face in a wild mess of curls. "You're crazy," she exclaimed. 

"I'm crazy right," Anakin threw back with the relief that they'd survived the fall flooding through him and giving him a sense of giddy accomplishment. "And you're not bad either." 

"We can't get out through here," she ignored the compliment and rubbed her ankle instead. 

"You all right?" 

"Yeah, just - we are stories down a non-working elevator shaft, and we can't get out of here, and what the kriff are you thinking!?" She hissed, not so angry that she'd forgotten how much their voices could echo up the shaft. 

Anakin raised up a hand for her to wait. He reached for the lightsaber pieces he had in his pockets and reconnected them, before igniting it. The light made for interesting shadows on their faces, and the sound echoed up through the shaft. Anakin could only hope that no one had noticed the open lift doors to be looking down on them. Otherwise this was going to get very interesting very quickly. Without stopping to look up, he instead thrust the lightsaber through the top of the elevator. As he walked around it, tracing a circle with melted durasteel, Zayna watched him. 

"You're still crazy," she muttered. 

"Also still right," Anakin retorted as he turned his lightsaber off and used the Force to prod the ceiling of the lift so it would fall into the lift below. "You coming?"

He used the Force to land lightly before glancing up at her. She was staring down at him looking as if she'd rather face a rancor in a closed space, but then she jumped and Anakin reached out in the Force to lighten her fall as well afraid that the fact that she'd been holding her ankle meant that she'd actually damaged it in the initial fall. 

Seemingly startled by how light she landed, Zayna's balance faltered, and she reached out to grab onto Anakin's shoulder. 

"Careful," Anakin said automatically, his hand reaching for her elbow. 

"Don't concern yourself; I'm fine," Zayna straightened up again and gave him a withering glare, before she pulled her datapad out again, ultimately ending up with an open lift door. Before Anakin could jump out first, she'd stepped over to push herself up on the duracrete which was about two feet higher than the floor of the lift. She jumped out and Anakin followed her, and pulled his breath in sharp. 

They'd stepped into a hallway that was obviously deep within the mountain. Along the floor, and along the ceiling lines, there were glow rods embedded into rock. The rock itself was a steely grey that had been polished smooth. For all it was clear that they were working with natural materials, the place had the look of an Imperial ship deck. 

"I don't like this," he muttered as he reached into the Force hoping for some sort of guidance that would allow them to get some sense of what might be going on. 

"Is this like a Jedi bad sense, or just a general bad sense of things?" She was speaking directly into his ear, close enough to him that he could almost feel her breath against his neck. 

"I'm… not certain," Anakin shook his head. 

"Not helpful," Zayna said pointedly as she moved quietly past him to look around the corner and into a room. 

Knowing that she was right, Anakin sighed internally and walked with her, and so the two of them moved down the hall. Off to the side every so many feet there were what seemed to be storage rooms that were largely empty. On the fourth one Anakin found crates and he hissed at Zayna to join him as he stepped into the otherwise empty room. 

As he stepped over to explore them, there was nothing in the crates, but they did have First Order insignia on the end and the two gave each other meaningful looks. Zayna pulled out her camera to document the items. 

As they left the room, Anakin couldn't help the crawling sensation that they were being watched. He turned, looking back through the room to try to spot any sort of camera or viewing equipment, but there was nothing that looked obvious to him and nothing that looked as though it might be hiding something less obvious. The dread felt like pressure on Anakin's shoulders pushing down on him so that he looked behind him as they stepped out of the room. But there was nothing outside of the crates they had just documented. Even the cameras that had been so prevalent throughout the Octab Industries facility seemed to be lacking here, but Anakin couldn't help but feel that it was because they weren't needed to keep an eye on the facility. 

"What?" Zayna asked, as they had walked three doors down past the only real sign of the First Order they had gathered thus far. 

Anakin turned to look at her. "I didn't say anything."

"You don't need to," Zayna's eyebrow raised. "It's like you're radiating tension." 

"I keep feeling like someone is watching us." 

"There's no one here," her voice dropped lower but despite the obvious certainty in the tone Anakin could sense a flash of worry in her. "Can't you Jedi sense that?"

"It's not that concrete," Anakin admitted. "I can sense people I know well if they aren't shut down in the Force, but this isn't that. This is more of a general sense of someone watching." 

"Someone, or something?" 

"Is it weird I half wish we'd found ourselves in a stormtrooper training camp?" Anakin said, trying to lighten the situation a little bit as he tried to sort out what he was getting a sense of. 

"Perhaps, but, at least we'd know what we were dealing with," Zayna responded as they carefully stepped through a dark archway. "Although," she looked over at him. "I don't really care to be shot at today." 

Anakin half laughed, but the sound died off as he stepped ahead of her through the archway into the chamber beyond. His gaze stretched to encompass the entire space. No longer were they anywhere that looked like an Imperial facility. Instead this chamber predated the corridors they had come down, likely the lifts to the surface, and certainly the Empire itself. As Anakin stepped forward, silently, it felt like stepping back in time, a hundred years, two hundred, two thousand…

The only reason the chamber itself wasn't completely dark, was a shaft of light coming down through what might have been a skylight of some variety emptying directly over the center of the chamber. It occurred to Anakin that probably it had been placed very carefully to allow the light to come through so that there was natural light in the chamber. And it was a good thing to as there was no artificial lighting in the entire space that he could see. The skylight created a spotlight into the center, and the shadows around the edges felt deeper as a result of the light. As Anakin stepped forward those shadows felt heavy as the weight of someone watching them had been earlier. In the center of the chamber there was a stone pedestal and as Anakin walked in and turned away from the light in the center, his eyes began to adjust, and around the room there were seven archways similar to the one they had walked through. 

"Stay here," he told Zayna quickly.

"What? Why? Where are you going?"

"They all look the same," Anakin pointed out quietly as he waved a hand around at the archways. 

"Oh," Zayna stopped walking, looking over her shoulder at the archway behind her. "All right, but what are you doing?"

"I'm going to see what's out there on that pedestal." 

"You know this is a trap right?" She put her hands over her chest. 

"What?"

"It's just like every cliché archaeology holo," she pointed out. "Blah blah, secret ancient chamber, blah blah, pedestal with something interesting that the hero's interested in, blah blah trap." 

Anakin grinned. 

"What?"

"You're calling me the hero," he raised his eyebrow and smirked. 

"I'm calling you stupid enough to not know how the cliché plays out," Zayna glared. 

"Well then, you'd best be ready to pull my stupid ass out of danger when it inevitably hits," he threw back over his shoulder as he stepped forward towards the pedestal. He could feel her in the Force, bubbling between curiosity and irritation at him, but he blocked her out as he moved forward, but it was replaced with the pressure of concern yet again because as he moved forward it became clearer exactly what was sitting on the pedestal. 

_The pyramid shaped object could give him answers. This place didn't belong solely to the First Order and it certainly did not belong to Octab Industries, while it may have been granted to them for their use. This place had belonged to those who were strong in the Force long before it had belonged to political organizations or industry. This place still belonged to those who were strong in the Force. It was a place of understanding and of learning, and this was only a piece of that knowledge._

_Anakin Solo was one of the strongest Jedi of his generation and he was anticipated to lead the Jedi into an era of greatness as his Uncle had before him. He had been able to see the pieces of a droid when he was two, taken it apart and put it back together without any assistance. He had once stopped the heart of a snake to save a friend. He had burned the surface of Yavin IV and survived as the forest burned around him. He had survived impossible odds to keep standing through a mission that had been doomed to failure. His strength in the Force was a certainty. His bloodline granted him a power that others could only dream at, but there was so much here he didn't understand._

_In a world that was upside down and not his own, where he had no one to ask questions of, this offered answers. And he could find them on his own terms and increase his own understanding. Take his place here in this galaxy - a place that he had been denied at home. He could return to lead the galaxy to peace._

"Anakin!" 

His breath pulled in sharp and Anakin stared at the pyramid in front of him with his hand a mere inch away. He pulled it back as if the pyramid were a hot coal and it might well be. 

"Anakin?" 

He took three steps back from the pedestal and turned around to Zayna, who was still standing in the archway that he'd left her with, but with one foot planted about where he'd left her, she looked as if she'd tried to split herself in two in order to keep herself near the entrance where they'd come in, but also to come and find him. 

"Anakin, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Anakin stepped back then, quickly, his heart pounding, the sense of pressure and the quiet insistence that he needed to come back, to learn, _to better understand._

"I think they were right about the Force users being here," he moved away from the pressure and the quiet insistence that kept pressing on him and stepped back towards her, reaching for her hand. It was warm and solid and his felt all too cool. "I don't know if the are right now, but they have been. Maybe for a lot longer than just - no definitely for a lot longer than whatever is going on here."

"What is that? You went all weird. You weren't answering me.

"It's a holocron - a Sith holocron I think - we need to get out of here right now and get back to the others."

"Wait, let me -" she pulled her datapad up to document it. "It's like you completely weren't here. I couldn't get you to respond." 

"It -" Anakin frowned. "Let's go. We can talk about this somewhere I can _think_." 

It was Zayna's hand on his elbow now, and she pushed him back out into the archway that had led back to the corridor and Anakin couldn't help but feel a certain amount of irony about feeling somehow less watched in the corridor where a moment before he'd felt as if there were eyes heavy on him, but it was nothing compared to the sense he'd gotten in the chamber itself the closer he got to the holocron - like it was calling him, or perhaps whomever had put it there was still there - watching. 

_Like Exar Kun_. 

But he'd really been too young to remember _anything_ about what had happened at the temple - only what he'd been told by his brother and his Uncle and his parents. "This must have been some sort of Sith temple…" he muttered. 

"Should we try to go back the way we came?" 

"Floating us up the lift shaft is going to be harder than bringing us down," Anakin said quietly, standing in the corridor and pulling himself in with the Force. He didn't want to leave them vulnerable, but he also didn't want to leave himself open to whatever was there - in case it was still here. He knew that Kun had taken control of Jedi trainees on Yavin, and while Anakin would have thought himself strong enough to resist something like that, he certainly hadn't back there. He hadn't even become aware of it right away.

Despite pulling in from the Force, Anakin could still feel her irritation at his respone in the way her hand squeezed his elbow, but she pulled out her datapad.

"Keep your eyes open while I take a quick look for options," she said, pulling up the blueprints and swiping through screens. And after a moment she pointed down the corridor. "If we go that way, I think we can find a docking bay here… We could wait there, and let them come and find us." 

"And if someone else finds us first?" 

"The lift doesn't work; unless you can jury rig it." 

Anakin hesitated. It might be possible. It would depend upon if the physical components were working and if they weren't, which of them weren't working. He could usually figure out what was wrong in a system - but the question would be if they would have the parts that they needed to fix the system's problems. And even if they did - how long it would take...

"Poe can come and get us," Zayna interrupted his thoughts.

"All right, let's do the docking bay thing."

Anakin fell in behind Zayna as she led the way. She had the information up on the datapad in front of her which meant she was able to quickly lead them past additional corridors that fed off of here. Anakin couldn't help but feel that there was the opportunity to house an army in this base. Had it been at one point a check-post? A place where soldiers could remain hidden until they could move out into the galaxy or another planet nearby for attack? He didn't know enough about where the First Order had attacked in the galaxy to know if that was a possibility that made sense. Were they actually shipping and funneling resources into the First Order through this place? Or had the crates been left behind under such a scenario as the one he'd pulled out before? Hopefully the answers would be in the data they had gathered, but at least they had proof that someone attached to the First Order had been here. And that probably one of those someones had been their Force user.

But what had he walked into? Because that cavern had been older than all of this, and older than the industry, and possibly way older than the Empire as well - had Palpatine known about it? Or Vader? Anakin couldn't say for certain whether or not the holocron had been there the entire time, and his mother hadn't said anything about the Force users being Sith, but it wasn't just Sith in the galaxy, was it? There were techniques at home that his Uncle had pulled in from the Fallani, and there were other Force users - including those that might pull from the Dark side of the Force - even if they were not strictly following Sith teachings. 

Anakin had mostly felt like he could handle himself in the Force, and had suspected he was well on his way to being a Knight rather than a mere Apprentice - so much so that he hadn't bothered to correct anyone when they'd referred to him as such. After all, in a galaxy where there were no Jedi, and no working Order, did those sorts of distinctions even matter? But the war at home had tested him in different ways - not through the Force and it had been a long time since he'd felt that shaken by something. There had been a pull from the holocron that was tremendous; had Zayna not been there what would have happened?

"All right," Zayna said. "I've put in the call to Poe."

"They haven't started jamming us?" Anakin stepped up beside her.

"Not yet, it's gone through and I got a reply." 

"You're sure no one can-" the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as they stepped through the bay doors into the bay and Anakin cut off with every intention of stepping in front of Zayna until she wasn't there to step in front of anymore. She'd been lifted in the Force, pulled from in front of Anakin, and was now held to the side, presumably unable to move any part of her body except for her eyes which looked terrified. She was dropped and then skidded across the durasteel floor so her back was pressed against the wall. 

It happened so fast that Anakin had just reached for his lightsaber when he could feel the pressure against him and he pushed back hard against that feeling that someone was pushing his hands into place and making him incapable of movement. He pushed the Force back, denying the ability of the pressure to hold him. 

"Zayna?" He called to her, and her eyes opened telling him she was alive whatever had hit her. His lightsaber was in his hands by the time the figure in dark robes had stepped out of the shadows and took a step towards Anakin.


	8. Chapter 8

Zayna was no longer standing beside Anakin, but was currently unmoving against the wall on the far side of the hangar. Anakin's natural inclination was to check on Zayna. She was his colleague and perhaps a newfound friend, but fight instinct kicked in and Anakin could feel the power in the figure stalking towards him. It was a very real power that he could sense in the Force, something that was atypical in his recent battles against the Yuuzhan Vong, and something told him that daring to remove his own guard for an instant might result in both his and Zayna's death - so instead he turned to face that power head-on. 

Tall, dressed head-to-toe in black, and masked - it could have been his Grandfather somehow come to life again and walking through these Imperial-like hallways as he might have as Darth Vader. Equally it was one of Anakin's nightmares -- perhaps this _was_ a nightmare. Like the figures in his dreams this one carried the mask, the darkness, the promise of power and of enforcing order in the galaxy… But in his nightmares it was Anakin behind the mask and obviously this wasn't him. Anakin wasn't the one enforcing his will upon the others in the room and wielding power that simmered dangerously in the Force. 

His mother had been right. Resistance Intelligence had been right. The First Order was using this planet. The Sith holocron he and Zayna had found just moments before had been indication enough that there was a connection between the First Order and the Force users that Leia had told him about and that both were connected in this place. Now with a man that looked so much like the one Anakin had seen earlier in what he suspected now had been a vision -- this was one of those Force users. And somehow Anakin knew without asking that this was Kylo Ren - the man who had killed his father in this universe. As he stretched out into the Force he couldn't find any other presences, but there was the sense still of being watched, not unlike he had felt in the room with the holocron. 

Anakin's throat tightened and he reached out into the Force, pushing his senses beyond the man in front of him and towards Zayna. He could sense her heartbeat even if she didn't seem to be moving. AT least she was alive. 

"A friend of yours?" 

The voice had a surreal quality, not quite human, but certainly not inhuman, and behind the modulator, Anakin could sense the mockery in it. His eyes narrowed, cool ice blue staring at the figure in front of him as he stepped to put himself solidly between Kylo Ren and Zayna. Zayna was still alive and it was Anakin's responsibility to keep her that way, and that meant keeping Kylo Ren's attention on him. He would somehow need to push him back, to subdue Ren and to revenge his father's death. 

_No._

_Not revenge._

This couldn't be revenge. It _wasn't_ revenge. It was protecting a friend and teammate. Anakin Solo didn't do revenge. 

(If he thought it firmly enough it would be true.)

Kylo Ren seemed to laugh behind the mask as he raised his hand towards Anakin. "Then I will let you watch her die." 

Anakin could feel the Force gathering around him and he had only an instant to turn his own focus and raise his hand to meet Ren's Force blast with one of his own. The tension in the Force between the two men was like invisible waves crashing together between them and sending ripples out, but Anakin didn't move even as several crates around them spiraled out towards the walls. 

The mask gave away no facial expressions, but despite this Ren wasn't trying to hide in the Force - perhaps seeing no need to - and thus Anakin could sense the ripples of surprise from the taller man. With what Ren had just tried Anakin should have had his back against the wall - dangling helplessly while the other man approached and likely killed his teammate. He couldn't help pressing his lips together in a tight grin as he stepped forward. 

"What? You weren't expecting someone to play your game?" 

"You know the Force." 

"I've been told it runs strong in my family," Anakin pushed back. He kept his demeanor easy by practice, but his senses were on full alert as he continued to try to put distance between Kylo Ren and Zayna by guiding him away from the slicer. 

"You're trained," the masked voice held a hint of disdain, but there was something else - excitement maybe? Or fear?

"Oh good, the mask doesn't negatively effect your powers of observation." 

The two stood face to face across the cavern. Behind Anakin and to his right he could still sense Zayna, alive, if not entirely alert. Behind Ren a large shuttle sat with its ramp down, presumably waiting to be boarded. It reminded Anakin of the Imperial shuttles that he had seen the few times he had been around Imperial forces recently. Had Ren been about to leave the planet? If so, to where? And had he recognized that he was about to be discovered? The question became moot as the familiar hiss-snap of a lightsaber blade igniting filled Anakin's ears. 

The red blade cast shadows across the shuttle, the rocks in front of Anakin, and only added to the appearance that he was fighting his grandfather. But this _wasn't_ his grandfather and the comparisons to Anakin Skywalker would only harm Anakin's ability to make good choices in this moment. Whomever Kylo Ren was, he was making choices that were harming the galaxy. He had chosen to hurt Zayna, and would have harmed Anakin if Anakin had not pushed back with the Force. He had killed Anakin's father in this universe. Had Anakin been an untrained Jedi he knew that it would have been over already. And who knew how many others had died at his hands? Anakin's hand reached for his own lightsaber and he thumbed the blade to life, raising it to a guard position as his eyes didn't leave Ren's face. 

"A Jedi." 

"Surprise," Anakin said, unable to avoid the smirk that pulled the corner of his mouth up into one of those expressions that made him look undeniably like his father. 

Kylo Ren's blade dropped into a sharp downward swipe. The tip of it connected with the duracrete under his feet and smashed into it as chunks of the crete went flying. Behind the mask there was an almost childishness to the words that followed: "There are no Jedi; I saw them destroyed."

"Try again," Anakin held his position, half wishing they could just get on with whatever might come next. "It's not so easy to destroy the Jedi. The Emperor couldn't do it. Darth Vader wasn't strong enough to-"

"Darth Vader is stronger than you will ever know!" 

The amount of passion behind this statement punctuated by his lightsaber once again falling down to send pieces of duracrete flying, startled Anakin, but he maintained his focus and took a step forward. "What do you know about Darth Vader?" he asked incredulously. "Besides a bad approximation of his style aesthetic? Did you raid his closet? The mask is all wrong, by the way. Trust me, I know Darth Vader better than you ever will." 

A sense of danger flared up as Kylo Ren lunged forward with a cry: "Lies!" 

Anakin used the Force to accent a jump to the side, pivot, and return the blow back towards Kylo. The blades met with a hiss as Ren met the attack with a quick and aggressive parry and then a low swing. Anakin gathered the Force to jump up and over the blade as it swept in a crimson arc underneath his feet. He landed behind where he'd been standing a few moments before, his blade raised up again as he took a step forward to thrust at Kylo Ren. 

It was the Force this time, a wave that pushed him back into the wall, as Ren swung his lightsaber in an arc. "You know nothing of Darth Vader's legacy!" 

The laugh was impossible to stop from bubbling up as Anakin reached deep inside himself to grapple with the Force and the focus necessary to counter the tension being directed towards him. It was perhaps a stupid thing to do in the moment, but it felt so absurd to be told he knew nothing of Vader's legacy, after a lifetime of doing nothing but living in its shadows. "I'm named after Anakin Skywalker," he threw back in Ren's face, raising his left hand palm up towards the ceiling and then directing the focus and energy of the Force back towards Ren. Pieces of the chamber ceiling loosened with the redirection and came shattering down like small pieces of duracrete hail "I know _everything_ about his legacy." 

Kylo Ren stumbled backwards, swinging his blade up wildly as he pulled his head back up to stare at Anakin directly. "Anakin Skywalker has nothing to do with Vader's legacy."

"That's where you're wrong," Anakin pushed back. He was taking the upper hand, circling Kylo Ren once again to push himself between Kylo Ren and the shuttle this time, but ultimately this would put him back between Ren and Zayna. "Do you know anything about him? Really? Other than that he wore all black, and strode around with a cape? Do you think this get-up makes you _him_? Do you know who he was behind of all of that? _Even until the end_? Do you know his hobbies? What he cared about? I _do_. I know all of those things because he was my _grandfather_ , so his legacy is not your job - it's _mine_. You're just a wannabe." 

The Force hit Anakin's mind like someone frantically rummaging through a storage locker looking for a lost shoe. The strength of it pushed Anakin back physically, two steps towards the ramp of the shuttle and he had to straighten his muscles up to help push Kylo Ren back away from his memories. Unexpected, Anakin knew Kylo Ren had used the attack to push to memories that Anakin would have rathered not shared. Dreams, and power, a fortress that had once belonged to Vader, the family that had connected Vader to the light side, and Anakin's deepest fears surrounding his own history - and it occurred to him it had been foolish to not put up walls. He had too long been fighting an enemy that couldn't access the Force and thus couldn't get into his head. Anger flared up mostly at himself. Anger that he redirected into pushing Ren back. "Get out of my head!" 

"You dream of becoming him," the voice had taken a different tone. Whether respect or jealousy Anakin couldn't say - perhaps it was both. "You're afraid." 

Anakin's breath caught heavily in his chest and he brought his gaze up to the mask. "No," he returned, with less certainty than he would have liked. "I'm not afraid. I don't fear the dark. It doesn't own me. " 

Zayna moved at the edge of his consciousness, pulling his attention backwards, and away from Ren. 

It was terrible timing. 

The attack moved with strength and a burst of speed that left Anakin throwing his lightsaber up almost too late to catch the edge of the crimson blade flying at his shoulder as if to swipe the blade right through him. A burst of pain pulsed through his right arm, and he pulled his other hand up, pushing back and holding in the Force. He could bring this entire cavern down on Kylo Ren's head, bury him in duracrete, and end this once and for all. The fury at having been caught off guard gathered with the need of an outlet to release. 

"You're as weak as he was," Kylo Ren spat. "You're all light." 

"Light isn't weakness," Anakin returned through gritted teeth. "Or have you not been around a star recently?" 

The blades held, Anakin all too close to the blasted black mask of the man who had killed his Father. Ren was taller than Anakin and larger in build and probably strength too, but Anakin had the Force in equal measure and determination that had kept him traversing through a worldship while his spleen emptied into his body. He held the blades for what felt like a lifetime, pushing back with muscles and the Force until he felt as if his arms might give out. He breathed in, narrowing his gaze, and breathed out. 

And this time as he breathed out Anakin switched off his lightsaber, using the Force to quicken his movements as he ducked and rolled under Kylo Ren, who stumbled forward with the sudden lack of Anakin's lightsaber pushing back to hold him up. Anakin came out on the other side, and as he stood up, he was met with a blade that he parried into a dance. He lept, Ren swung, he swept low, Ren parried and matched him again. Kylo Ren's motions were aggressive, they lacked finesse and precision and would in no way pass one of Master Kam's training sessions, but each blow could be deadly and Anakin could feel it in the tension of the Force, in the pain that continued to shoot through his right arm as he adjusted to fighting with his left. 

He lept forward, pushing Kylo Ren away from Zayna and back towards the shuttle. In the past two years of his life, Anakin had been required to take the forms that he had learned at the Academy, and to shift them and mold them into something that would work against the enemy that he fought. When they fought with amphistaffs and razor bugs, whether you held a perfect Ataru or Jar'Kai mattered less than your ability to adapt. So Anakin adjusted his form to echo Ren's own. Stealing back the aggression from the other man, Anakin brought his blade up again, and again, matching Ren a little earlier each time, pushing further into his face, until Kylo Ren stepped backwards to find the ramp of the shuttle there and he stumbled, going down, and rolling. Anakin reached out in the Force as the lightsaber flickered and reached to pull it into his hand. 

"No!" Kylo Ren leapt to his feet, and turned on his heel, facing Anakin once again, the lightsaber still in his hand. He pointed towards the shuttle, and the Force slammed into Anakin's mind again.

The two men stood, each with a lightsaber in hand, each with a hand outstretched towards the other, once again caught in tension that didn't allow either of them to move. As powerful as Anakin was, Kylo Ren was matching that power and seemingly without sweating to do so. Anakin pushed back as he felt Kylo Ren in his mind once more, rifling through memories of the Academy, Sernpidal, his father raging at him after Chewie's death. "No," Anakin winced, fury at those memories being invaded gathering, strengthening his own resolve. 

"Han Solo." 

Ren's words were barely loud enough for Anakin to hear them, but Anakin found himself suddenly tumbling into memories.

_Chewbacca swinging a boy, maybe three or four, around an achingly familiar ship's main hold._

_Images of his mother singing soft songs to sleep tonight._

_Fighting - his parents, mother and father, his father slamming through the door. His mother turning to glance at a child, 'he'll be back, don't worry Ben'._

_A walkway, a lightsaber, his father, a burst of anguish followed by the pain of having been shot._

Anakin staggered backwards.

Something had happened to the oxygen in the room. He struggled to stand up again, this time just barely knocking back another thrust from the masked man that had leapt forward once again, this time seemingly powered by raw rage. Anakin parried, and reached for the Force like a gasp, pushing Ren back enough that he was able to roll backwards and rise again several feet away. 

"I don't have a brother!" Kylo Ren's words were screamed in enough fury, that there was a creak from several of the large exhaust pipes on the wall and a geyser of steam shot forth.

"Well you aren't the one I was looking for either," Anakin threw back at him, desperately trying to reject what he'd just seen, but he knew what he'd seen and it made sense, in a weird way made sense such that Anakin knew it was the truth. 

"Come home," Anakin threw out as he ducked behind the edge of the transport ramp as something came flying over his head. His words made no sense, a half wish that maybe, maybe this was one of his dreams, and that simply asking this man to come home would work at least as easily as it had for his Uncle with his Grandfather. But as he moved around the room, matching the increasingly erratic, intensely dangerous strikes from Kylo Ren - _Ben_ , he scrambled for a more workable idea. He'd originally been willing to kill the man in front of him if he had to, but as Anakin ducked under the wing, he knew he couldn't do that - not now. If this was Ben - if he hadn't died with the other Jedi -- then _why_? Was this why Uncle Luke had gone? Did his mother _know_? 

Anakin tripped over a gash in the duracrete made earlier by Ren, and fell on his behind as Kylo Ren lunged at him once again. He blocked the attack and rolled out from under it, leaping to his feet some distance away as the bay doors began to open. 

"Anakin!" Zayna's voice was crystal clear across the bay, and with a rush of relief pulsing through him, Anakin stood up straighter again, using the Force to push a half dozen crates from the walls into Kylo Ren's direct pathway before he turned and ran towards Zayna's voice and the sound of a ship's repulsor engines as the _Diamond Star_ came down into the bay opening. 

Faintly he heard the sound of the crates crashing as he met Zayna near the open ramp. "Jump," he commanded her. 

"It's too far!"

"Trust me, jump!"

She did, and he pushed her in the Force, sending her straight into Sarik's waiting hand. Both of them staggered back with the momentum of the extra boost Anakin had given Zayna, and Anakin gathered the Force for himself and leapt up to the ramp, landing mostly gracefully on its edge as Kylo Ren emerged on the other side of the shuttle. 

He was yelling, but over the shuttle Anakin could no more make out distinct words than he could the distinct words of the writing on the wall across the bay. The emotions were unmistakable though - anger, fear, curiosity, a demanding to be addressed and considered - but Anakin couldn't do that right now.

"Do they have us somehow?" Poe's voice came over the speakers. "A tractor beam?"

"No?" Sarik yelled back over the comms. "There's nothing here."

Anakin looked back at Ren realization flooding through him along with a half-sense of awe. "Ren does," he muttered, likely only loudly enough that Sarik might hear him, and he stepped forward - with all the fear and the frustration of having been lied to and the pain from his arm boiling up and in the Force he pushed hard enough that it should have sen Kylo Ren backwards, but he held, the yacht seeming to creak against something that would not move. Anakin focused, once again on the room instead of Kylo Ren, threatening to bring the roof down around the other man. Duracrete falling near him broke Ren's concentration, and Anakin pushed with the Force slamming him into the command shuttle so that he staggered as he released whatever hold he had on the ship. As he did so, the _Diamond Star_ jumped forward, and Anakin's arms grabbed the edge of the ship's walls to keep from falling off, and down into a valley of toxic pools below them all. 

As the ramp pulled up, Anakin grabbed a hand-hold and pulled himself back. He was breathing hard, feeling spent on the other side of whatever he had just done. It hadn't been revenge, except - for all the ways it had been. It was anger at his father's death, anger that his brother in this galaxy was in fact a personification of his worst nightmare, anger at being in a galaxy that was not his own, and the fear of what this could mean and in desperation he'd pulled on that fear and anger to get them all out of here. Anakin said he wasn't afraid of the darkness, and maybe he knew it didn't have to control him, but the knowledge did nothing to soothe Anakin's soul in the moment.

Fingers touched his arm where his jacket had been gashed with the lightsaber he'd nearly been sliced through with. 

"You're hurt." 

Anakin pulled his attention back to the people in front of him. Sarik was standing nearby, and Nir'mala had just came flying down the hall, but it was Zayna standing next to him - her fingers on his arm. 

"I'm fine," Anakin said automatically. 

"No you're not," Nir'mala exclaimed. "Let me take you, and we'll find a medkit, what happened?" 

"There-" Anakin realized words were going to be difficult. "I - a fight." 

"Is this a lightsaber burn?"

"It just got too close," Anakin deferred the concern, reaching out to grab Zayna's shoulder for a moment. "Are you okay?". 

Over the loudspeaker came Poe's voice: "Everyone get strapped in -- we've got incoming!"

"I can help with the guns," Anakin said, but Nir'mala was shaking her head. 

"I'm fine. We've got this." Zayna's hand squeezed his elbow and she followed after Sarik who had headed instantly towards the gun bays.

"They've got this, Anakin," Nir'mala told him. "You're coming with me." 

Anakin felt like he should be following Sarik and Zayna, but his mind also felt like it was full of static. Whether this was pain, shock, or possibly something he was picking up in the Force Anakin didn't know, but he stopped protesting as the ship took a hit to its shields, and he and Nir'mala shifted sideways so that his shoulder and the hallway wall hit hard. He unsuccessfully bit back a swear and pushed off of the wall, grabbing with his non-injured arm the door frame and pulling himself and Nir'mala into the cabin where the bunks were. 

"Thanks," she twitched a lekku as she reached for the medkit, grabbing it and then the top of a bunk with one hand as another hit threatened to knock her off her feet. 

"I should be out there," Anakin muttered. 

"Like hell you should. You're completely in shock right now. What happened?" Nir'mala opened the medkit, braced herself against one of the bunks, and reached into it for a bacta patch. "How did you and Zayna get down there?"

"We went down a lift," Anakin sat down, and slid out of the burned jacket, wincing as it came over his skin. It hurt, but even with that, it was nothing compared to what he'd been through in Myrkr. Still he'd never had a lightsaber so close, and the thought of just how close it had come to taking his arm off - or worse - was anything but comforting. He pushed it out of his mind, no use borrowing trouble that hadn't happened, and he looked down at the wound itself, red and angry, and probably likely to scar if they didn't repair it. "How did you find us?" 

"Zayna," Nir'mala replied as she reached for a cleaning pad. "This is probably going to hurt," she apologized as she reached for his arm. "I've never dealt with a lightsaber injury before." 

Anakin pulled in a breath and held it as she pressed the anti-infective cleanser against the skin. It did hurt, but he was distracted by the ship bouncing once again, this time there was a pause, and then the pull of a ship gone to lightspeed, and Anakin breathed out with relief, only to pull his breath back in between his teeth with a hiss as Nir'mala placed another pad against his skin. 

"Sorry," she looked up at him. "I figured you were distracted, so it wasn't the worst time to switch those out." 

Anakin shook his head. "No, it's fine."

"They should look at this at base, but we'll swap that with a bacta patch in a minute," she said. "And that should hold it until then. Anywhere else?" 

Anakin shook his head. 

"Nowhere else?" Her tone held somewhere between impressed and bewildered. 

"No, I mean, there are other injuries, but I think a healing trance will be as effective," Anakin explained. "They're more internal - nothing you're going to easily fix with a medkit." 

His head hurt, and he couldn't get out of his mind the figure of Kylo Ren, nor how much he looked like Anakin always had in his dreams. All of his life Anakin had thought the masked man in black who turned to the Dark Side were visions of himself in some future where he made choices that led him to power and darkness. Had he been dreaming of Kylo Ren instead? Or was it possible, likely even, that he could have become Kylo Ren in another lifetime? He breathed out shakily, and pushed his fingers to his temples, massaging his forehead gently. 

Nir'mala was still there and she put a hand on his shoulder gently. "Are you alright?" 

_No._

"I'm fine." Anakin brought his head up and his hands down and he offered her a smile noticing that Kae had joined them and was standing in the doorway. "Or I will be after I get some rest. We answered at least one of the questions - unfortunately I didn't stop them, so it'll be a question that comes around again in a different configuration." 

"Sometimes that's how it goes," Kae's lower voice was calm, and she was watching him. "Zayna told me a bit of what happened, but we'd like to do a full debrief in twenty - if you're up to it." 

Anakin straightened and nodded. The bacta patch must have had a bit of a pain killer in it too, because as much pain had shot through his arm a few moments before was less now, and Anakin knew that he hadn't applied the Force to it just yet. "I will be. I might do a little bit of meditation in the meantime?" 

Kae nodded at him and Nir'mala took that as her cue to stand up. 

"I'll come get you just before," Nir'mala said with a smile. 

True to her word, Nir'mala returned and a feather-light touch to his arm brought Anakin back to the present moment. He opened his eyes and looked up into her sapphire ones and pulled himself out of the healing trance to stretch his arm in front of himself carefully. The bacta patch held, and while Anakin could still feel the bruising along his ribs and hip bone, it was better than it had been a few moments before. 

"Thanks," Anakin offered her a smile and stood up carefully. His head wasn't spinning, and although he could not say that he felt completely centered or calm, he felt better than he had upon leaving Raxus Prime. 

They had all gathered again in the central hold. Poe nearest the cock-pit in case he needed to return there. Sarik leaned up against a wall casually, Kae at the booth and Zayna next to her, with three datapads in front of her. They all looked up as Anakin and Nir'mala entered. 

"You doing all right?" Poe asked with concern in his dark eyes. 

Anakin nodded. "Nir'mala got me patched up at least until we get back to base, and I'll be fine." It felt a bit as if he'd been telling people that he would be okay on a semi-consistent basis these past few months. Starting with Myrkr and moving on from here, although at least, and Anakin couldn't help but feel some warmth at this realization, there was a team here that cared that he _was_ okay. This mental note made him look over at Poe as he sat down and give him a smile and a mild shrug. 

Anakin slid onto the booth next to Zayna trying to be careful and not crowd her datapads. She turned to meet his gaze as he joined her and for a moment he thought she was going to say something, but then she didn't and instead she turned her attention back to the datapad in front of her. 

Her fingers moved across the datapad, and a holo-projection of the crates they'd discovered in the lower levels of the mountains were projected up. The logo on them got a series of beeps from BB-8 and Poe stepped forward and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Well, that's not unexpected considering, but that's good." 

"Unfortunately," Kae said softly. "I don't know that we can absolutely tie Octab to the First Order from the data we pulled from their set, and unfortunately with the altercation that occurred - the First Order will be alerted to the fact that we may know their secrets and any physical evidence is likely to disappear." 

Anakin wrapped an arm gently around his chest. It was less sore than it had been initially, but it still almost hurt to breathe and the pressure against his chest made the pain slightly less. 

"That's not your fault, Anakin." 

Anakin pulled his gaze up to meet Poe's. The older man was looking at him intently and he nodded quietly before looking down. It was a nice thought, but Anakin was suddenly rather aware of being the youngest person on their team, and afraid that he'd made a bad call despite the experience he had. 

"What happened with the altercation?" Kae asked him. 

"Zayna found the tunnels underneath everything," Anakin said. "So we headed that direction figuring that if stuff wasn't in the public blueprints, maybe it wasn't because they were hiding something down there. We took the lift down," next to him was a burst of amusement in the Force and when he looked over Zayna was smirking at him. He ignored her and went on: "And started exploring down there. That's where we found these crates, but not a lot else. Eventually we uncovered a holocron -" 

"A what?" Nir'mala's lekku were twitching when Anakin looked up at her and he hesitated. 

"A holocron. It's how Jedi… and Sith… share their knowledge. It's a cube, or in the case of this one - it was a Sith holocron and it's a pyramid. You have to be Force sensitive to open it, but when you do, you're able to talk to the Jedi - or Sith - Master - or Masters - that made it. Usually you can't access the entire thing at once - but rather as you learn, and you progress in your abilities, you're able to move through the knowledge contained within. I had one at home that belonged to an old Jedi Master, and it was one of the ways that I learned, and also others at the Academy. But this wasn't a Jedi holocron - it was a Sith holocron - and I'll lay credits on it being there as a part of Kylo Ren's training." 

Anakin looked over at Zayna wondering if she would say anything about what had happened in the room. Truthfully he still wasn't sure what had happened in the room and he was thankful when Zayna didn't mention it but he made a note to ask her about it later in private. Whatever it was, he'd felt drawn to the pyramid and that has been worrisome - and that was really putting it mildly. 

"Is that where you found him?" Kae's eyebrows raised. 

Anakin moistened his lips and shook his head. Him was Kylo Ren, but also Ben Solo - something he felt as if ought to have been mentioned before he came face to face with the other man. "No, we found Kylo Ren later."

Zayna looked up at Kae and she was frowning. "I had thought we could possibly get out that way. We stumbled across him by accident."

But Anakin didn't really believe it had been an accident. There had been eyes on him in that chamber with the holocron. He frowned. 

"What is it, Anakin?" Poe's brow was furrowed. 

"I'm not sure," he admitted and he looked up to the room. They were all looking at him. Sarik skeptically, Nir'mala with a worried expression in her face, and Poe's expression mirrored that concern but also he was waiting quietly with a faith that honestly Anakin didn't feel like he deserved. He felt as if he understood even less here than he had fighting the Yuuzhan Vong for all that everyone was looking at him in the moment. At least there he had known what he was fighting against. Here it was like picking up a book and finding it was in a different language, one just similar enough that sometimes you could get the jest, but other times you were just left grasping for meaning. And as much as he wanted to tell them something, some sort of wise statement that it felt like he ought to have on the tip of his tongue if he was really going to call himself a Jedi, he couldn't come up with anything. It didn't really leave any reason for Kae to consider him further beyond the newest member of the Resistance. He swallowed a sigh and shook his head. "I just have a sense that there's stuff I need to think about. Nothing definite, I'm sorry." 

"There is enough information on these datapads to send through information about investors, and perhaps to follow some of their money trails if we can get it to the Resistance in time," Zayna said after a beat. She pulled back up some of the datapad information. "I'm working on trying to pull together a secure subspace comm so that we can stop and have BB-8 transmit it back to the base before we get there." 

"What about what they've been transporting and where?" Anakin looked over at her. "We said there was the possibility that they were feeding supplies to the First Order, right? Supplies that might have built the Starkiller base?" 

"Try this," Sarik tossed a drive over to Zayna and she caught it in her hand with surprise. 

"What is it?" 

"I pulled it off Master Octab himself," Sarik pressed his lips together in what might have been a smirk. 

Zayna's eyes widened and she motioned to the droid who was hanging back by Poe. "BB-8 come over." 

She slid the drive into the droid, and he whirred gently and then projected what appeared to be a map up into the hold. 

"You've got to be kidding," Poe exclaimed. 

Kae had stood up and moved to the middle of the holo. The blueish light of it reflected off of her silver hair making her look a little otherworldly. Her face looked excited as she turned her attention back to Sarik. "You said you lifted this off of Octab?" 

Sarik nodded. "Is it what I think it is?"

Anakin looked between Poe, Kae, and Sarik all who seemed to know precisely what the galactic map represented, while he, Nir'mala and Zayna, looked a little bewildered. It was Nir'mala who finally voiced the question the three of them had been wondering, with a twitch of her blue lekku. 

"What is it?" 

"A First Order support network," Poe grinned, smacking his hands together in a brief gesture of applause as he stepped forward. "There'll be a question of how recent it is, but you said you grabbed this off his person. You're a genius Sarik," his eyes met the Rodian's eyes and the Rodian shrugged. "No seriously, this could - I mean unless you replaced it with another one we won't have long before they start closing all of these out - but this could blow things open and it's proof - undeniable and irrefutable proof that Octab is supporting the First Order. We don't have anything like this." 

"Sadly I didn't leave them another drive," Sarik was eyeing Poe. "But I hadn't dared to hope it would be this useful. I just figured if it was pocketed, then he didn't want anyone to see it." 

Poe clapped Sarik's shoulder with his hand and grinned again. "I'm going to see if I can tease a better route back to base out of this old yacht." 

Kae nodded his dismissal, and while she looked vaguely amused at Poe and Sarik she was clearly pleased with what they'd found. "Thank you BB-8," she said softly, reaching out to the droid for the drive. "And thanks to all of you, you're dismissed. Get your rest. We will likely be very busy when we make it back to base. Anakin?"

Anakin stood to let Zayna out of the booth, and was turning to follow her when Kae's voice stopped him and he turned back around. Nir'mala left with a curious look, but it was clear they had been been dismissed, and so she followed after Zayna with a reluctance that Anakin could feel in the Force. Tired and uncertain what it was that he couldn't quite put aside he pulled a smile to his face anyway. "Yeah?" 

"There was something else," Kae pressed. 

Her tone wasn't unkind, but something about her made Anakin hesitate. Poe had told Anakin that he wasn't certain Kae trusted anyone much, and Anakin had put his immediate concern aside for the probability that Kae was somewhat unfamiliar with Force sensitives in general, the Jedi in particular, and Anakin was at once a Force sensitive, a Jedi, and the newest member of the team, thus she was cautious with him. But this felt like something different and potentially more dangerous and it was being directed at him while he was tired and aching and emotionally raw and he was aware enough of it to not answer without consideration. 

What he'd learned about Kylo Ren had hurt more than the pain in his ribs, the pain in his arms, and any of the knocks he'd taken from the lightsaber fight itself. It hurt because that was - well, maybe not this universe's version of _him_ exactly, or even of Jacen or Jaina, but still, it was this universe's version of his brother. It hurt additionally because after everything that he'd said about needing to know as much information about Kylo Ren as possible his mother had said nothing. And surely she knew who Kylo Ren was or suspected in some way - wouldn't she? Anakin didn't believe that she didn't have some inkling. The galaxy might believe Ben Solo dead, but his mother would have known the truth. He knew how close his family at home was. Jacen had felt it when Jaina had been injured, if someone had been seriously injured, or killed, then the others would have known. (What had they felt when he'd been pulled here? Had they felt anything? Was it like he'd died to everyone at home?) 

"As I said, I don't have a clear sense of it," Anakin pushed back firmly. He wasn't going to use the Force, but he wasn't going to answer either. She might have been the most senior officer on the yacht, but Poe was the mission lead, and Anakin had the sudden sense that when he came to his conclusions that he was going to speak with Poe directly. Or his mother upon return. Certainly he was answering nothing right now while he felt as if he'd been scraped raw. "I will meditate on it and see if I can come up with clarification." 

Anakin felt a twinge pulling back to what he knew likely drew on the mysterious reputation of Jedi or Force users, but there was a reason that meditation was a thing they did after all, and in this case, the distance to pull himself together would help him think with more clarity about something that had been utterly unanticipated. Perhaps it shouldn't have been. Perhaps he ought to have expected that a Solo kid wouldn't be so easily killed by any Dark Jedi no matter how strong that Jedi was. 

The idea occurred to him that perhaps Ben Solo hadn't been killed because he'd been taken purposefully. The uncomfortably distant memory of the darkness that had come along with Emperor Palpatine's clone when Anakin had been no more than a baby - an event that he was reasonably certain he should have no memory of and yet it sat there in his mind more like a holovid he'd watched than something that had truly happened to him, but clear. So clear. 

"Is there anything else?" He asked pointedly. "If there isn't, then I'd like to go lay down for a bit." 

Kae considered him for a moment and then she nodded without a word and stood up herself to leave for the cockpit. 

Anakin watched her go for a moment, moving only when the pain in his ribs began to make itself known again. He breathed in slowly, pulled the Force in to focus on the spot against his ribcage where he could feel the bruise gathering. It occurred to him as he began to do this that he would do better if he were sitting and that he desperately needed the quiet. 

In the small hallway that connected the main crew hold to the crew cabins, and ultimately to the cargo holds, he found Zayna waiting for him outside the door. She was leaned up against the side of the hall, her arms crossed over her chest, and a rather intense look in her eyes.

"Are Sarik and Nir'mala in there?" Anakin asked, ignoring the curiosity that Zayna seemed to be draped in. 

"Yeah," she said without moving. "Did you tell her?"

Anakin's gaze flickered up to Zayna's face. "Tell her what?" 

Zayna met the gaze for an instant and she pushed back from the wall. "Come on." 

"I really just want to lay down," Anakin began. 

"Just, follow me," Zayna used her head to motion towards the cargo bay. 

Anakin glanced at the door she'd moved away from and then her figure down the hall. Did she just want to talk? Because Anakin wasn't certain he could put up with additional questions from Zayna right now. Mostly she seemed inclined to poke at his abilities and his beliefs, and it was both exhausting and frustrating and he really wasn't in the mood. But unlike whatever he'd gotten from Kae a moment before, he didn't get the sense that he should avoid the conversation. He also could tell, upon checking in the Force, that Sarik and Nir'mala were both in the crew quarters. The thought of walking in and having to deal with Sarik's disinterested stare and Nir'mala's overly abundant sympathy ultimately was the thing that made up his mind: he followed Zayna.

The corridor emptied into the cargo bay and Zayna was waiting and as he entered she didn't say anything but instead nodded for him to keep following her. He cleared a stack of supply crates behind her and almost bumped into her as she stopped directly in front of him. As he stepped out from around her he realized that hidden out of view from the rest of the bay was a bunk. It normally would have been open to the bay, but the way the crates were stacked meant that it was somewhat protected and hidden from view. He looked over at her and found her lips were teased up in a smirk. 

"I get points for sharing," she said knowingly. 

For a moment Anakin didn't say anything and then he nodded. "Yeah, you do. Thanks. How did you -" 

"I've known this was here from the beginning but nobody wants to sleep in the cargo bay usually. I assume that this was here for the original owner of the yacht to put his hired help out here away from himself and his co-pilot or more important crew. Regardless," she shrugged. "You shouldn't get bothered here for a bit anyway, which should be a little more restful than with the rest of us." 

"Yeah, but-" he stepped across to the bunk and sat down gingerly on it as if it might disappear. When it didn't, he pulled himself into it. It wasn't large, but he could just sit up under the overhang. 

"I wasn't knocked out the entire time," Zayna responded softly. "I saw you fighting him, and I heard some of it." 

"How much?" Anakin's words felt tight in his chest. 

"Enough." 

Their eyes met and Anakin found himself looking down again. 

So she had heard that this was Leia's son - Anakin's brother from this world. He wasn't certain how she would even take that considering her perspective on the Force. It felt a bit as if everything he'd tried to explain might have been blown out like a blast door into atmosphere, sucking whatever wasn't tied down into the darkness of space - or in this case, into the darkness of whatever it was Ben Solo had found himself following or trying to be. His eyes felt hot and he couldn't have said why he felt so ashamed of this. It wasn't _his_ brother - at least not in the way that Jacen was. They hadn't grown up together and Anakin had never met him before today. This wasn't Anakin's galaxy. Up until a few weeks ago, he had not impacted it at all, and whatever ripples he might have made could not have stretched far enough to have impacted this Kylo Ren's life at all. It wasn't his responsibility.

And yet somehow it felt like it might be now.

"Are you going to tell Kae?" Anakin asked, still feeling as if there were invisible hands on his neck making it hard to breathe. 

"Did you?" 

"Not yet," the words felt hollow in his throat. 

"I don't think it's my place." Zayna pulled up one of the crates and sat down on it. They both fell into silence - or what passed for it on a spaceship traveling at lightspeed. 

_Pull yourself together_ , Anakin told himself sternly as he pulled his head out of everything that had happened and back to his body. The bacta patches would help his arm, and probably they'd give him some additional treatment when he got back to base, but for now that was covered. It was the ribs that felt bruised and maybe he cracked that he directed his attention towards. He focused inward with the Force, past all of the confusion that he'd managed to collect on this mission along with all of the other more useful data they'd gathered, and in the near silence he could focus the Force into knitting injuries back together. 

It occurred to him vaguely, somewhere just on the edge of his senses that Zayna was still there on the crate and he had really no idea why. Maybe she just wanted to be certain he wasn't going to take over this quiet place - although that didn't make any sense really. She'd shared it with him, and it wasn't as if they were likely to be taking this yacht on any further missions - or even be necessarily working on the same team in the future. Perhaps she was more worried about his injuries than was really warranted. Everyone had seemed more worried about him than he really was about himself. He'd been through so much worse physically speaking and recently even. But he'd had Jaina and Jacen there. 

In the quiet of the ship Anakin missed his siblings more than ever. _His_ siblings. _His_ parents. _His_ galaxy. Fiver. Tahiri. His X-wing, even though he hadn't been in it much recently. Things that were familiar. A history that he didn't have to second guess, and then look again, things that he'd taken for granted in ways that he hadn't even considered that he _could_ be taking them for granted. 

If Jacen or Jaina had been here what would they have told him? Jaina would probably be ready to go back after Kylo Ren and the three of them together could have probably easily have taken him. Well, maybe that was overly confident, but Anakin couldn't help but feel that it was true. The man he'd been fighting had strength, and a brutal aggression that kept you moving and fighting, but Anakin could have probably kept going had he not been so startled by discovering just _who_ Kylo Ren was. 

And Jacen? As he kept the Force focused around his injuries, Anakin thought about his older brother. They hadn't agreed much recently and that was possibly understating things. They had fought recently. Anakin wasn't even certain that his brother had trusted him to make good calls even though Uncle Luke had determined he was capable enough to provide leadership for the team on Myrkr. Maybe Jacen had been right though. Had the team made it out, even when Anakin hadn't? Because somehow he knew, here, or there - he was where the Force had taken him - not still with his siblings. Whatever he and Jacen had left unfinished would remain so, haunting them both for the rest of their lives in any universe. 

Asking what Jacen might do in this situation was academic, but it wasn't as if Jacen hadn't occasionally had good ideas, it was just that there wasn't space for overthinking everything in the middle of a war - no more than there was now. So what was he doing? If only it were as simple to direct the Force at the source of this emotional pain that threatened to disrupt his focus, and heal up his heart as easily as the bruises against his ribcage. 

He opened his eyes. 

Zayna was still sitting on the crate, but she'd turned sideways. With her back against the larger stack of crates, she had pulled out a datapad and was currently looking through something. Anakin wondered if there was a Zayna Ardellian in his galaxy, or if some congruence of events that had created the differences in this galaxy from the one he knew had created a Zayna Ardellian in this one and left the one he knew without one. Like this one had created a Ben Solo and a Breha Solo and left his own without those - but with Anakin Solo, and Jacen and Jaina Solo instead. It was a question he'd never know. Unless he ran into someone he knew - like Admiral Ackbar - those were the sorts of questions that were impossible to answer. 

Zayna straightened her shoulders and looked up at him and realizing that he was looking at her she shifted forward, putting the datapad down on the crate in front of her knees. 

"Sorry, I zoned -" 

"It's all right, I had this other stuff I was trying to review before we get back, but I figured I could do that here as well as in there," she straightened up a little, pressing her lips together and shrugging. "In case you needed something." 

"Thanks," Anakin said softly. He wouldn't have, and he'd have been perfectly capable of getting it if he had needed it, yet something about the fact that she was willing to stay was nice. 

"You probably saved my life," she pointed out. 

"You probably saved mine," he returned evenly. 

"I just called Commander Dameron. You did all the heavy work." 

"Yeah, but you did it while somehow managing to not attract the attention of… well, of Kylo Ren," he really had no idea what Ren was - a Sith? His mother hadn't seemed to think so, but while Kylo didn't seem to have a Darth title, Anakin had found the Sith holocron, and certainly the other man seemed to idolize Darth Vader. Instead of dwelling on that question he offered her a half-grin. "That's mildly impressive." 

"Well that's praise coming from a Jedi," she seemed almost as if she might be mocking him. "Anyway, you were keeping him occupied." 

"I was trying," Anakin raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. "But it's still impressive." 

"You done doing whatever it is you're doing?" 

Anakin shook his head. "No, but I think I'm feeling a bit better. I might lie down and actually try to sleep - we still a few hours out?" 

"Yeah," Zayna nodded. "If you want I can hang out around here." 

"It's not the most comfortable," Anakin pointed out, raising an eyebrow at her seat. 

"Nah, it's fine. Just cause I'm a slicer doesn't mean I can't rough it a bit." 

"That wasn't what I-" he realized halfway into the sentence that she was joking.

"Sleep, Solo," she grinned. "We'll be back in no time and then the fun really starts."


	9. Chapter 9

Anakin jerked awake to Zayna's hand on his shoulder. 

"Sorry," Zayna apologized softly. "We're headed down to the base and Commander Dameron said everyone should get ready." 

Anakin nodded and she offered him a quick smile as she stood up before she disappeared around the crates. He moved more slowly after that initial jerk, the initial movement having sent a shot of discomfort down his spine. But as he sat up, he realized that nothing was so sore as it was stiff -- with the exception perhaps of his arm. Although that pain reminded him that there were pain relievers assisting. Without them he was certain it would have felt much worse. 

He stood up slowly, testing nearly every muscle movement before committing to it. In general he found that he felt capable of moving easily enough. This was nothing in comparison to how badly he had been injured on Myrkr and he'd kept moving there. With the Bacta patch Nir'mala had given him earlier, and the Force healing he'd done while he slept, he felt generally able to walk on his own and probably to do so for some period of time before he would need to see medical. 

There was a slight shudder as he felt the hyperdrive cut out and the ship reverted to its sublight drive and Anakin knew they were likely in system and by the time he found himself in the main hold, the rest of the team minus Sarik was there as well strapped into various seats. Anakin could feel Sarik up in the cockpit, probably playing co-pilot for Poe in Anakin's absence. There was a mild frustration that spiked as he realized he'd really wanted the opportunity on the way back to perhaps prove to Poe that he could do the piloting thing on his own, but that wasn't what circumstances had brought. 

"You feeling better?" Nir'mala asked him as she watched him take a seat. 

"Definitely, yeah," Anakin pulled a full grin to his face as he strapped his own crash strap. 

There was a wide smile from Nir'mala, and a smaller smile from Kae, but no other questions and Anakin settled in with the others as they made the descent onto Lothal. 

He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the ship's wall. There was a part of him that was absolutely dreading the debriefing that would come. It would contain questions that he had no idea how to answer. And having spent most of the trip home in some variation of a healing trance or resting, he was still grappling with the realization that he had a living brother in this galaxy. And that he had seen him face to face. 

How old was Ben Solo now? After the conversation with Kaydel Ko, they had left so quickly on this mission that Anakin really hadn't had the opportunity to do much research into his mother's children or the family that she'd had once upon a time. He remembered Kaydel saying that Ben had been older than she was and if Anakin were guessing, Kaydel was probably a year or two older than he was, maybe a little bit more - but she wasn't that much older, so Ben was a few years older than that, making him maybe 26 - 27? How long had he been studying the Dark Side? 

Anakin could not help a quiet fury that somehow this brother had been seduced even knowing everything that their shared grandfather had done - apparently in both of their galaxies - and as Anakin had done his reading so far as he could tell that history was very similar. Darth Vader's actions much the same, the fall of the Jedi documented similarly. And if the Republic that had risen in the ashes of the Empire had taken a slightly different tact it was also similar in many ways, perhaps the most important one being that it had sought to provide freedom to the systems and the planets in those systems to govern themselves in ways that would never have been allowed under the Galactic Empire. 

Despite this, somehow Ben Solo had been led to believe that the First Order and the Dark Side were the answer to whatever problems that Republic might have had. To be fair it had certainly had a fair number as best as Anakin could tell. But in doing so he had betrayed everything that his Grandfather had ultimately given his life for - his family. Perhaps this was what made all of this the worst. The knowledge that in this reality, his mother had lost all of her family. Her daughter, her son, her husband, and her brother. There was just her - looking as strong and as determined as Anakin had ever remembered her looking of recent - but without anyone around her to offer support. 

And Anakin had tried to offer some support. And some part of him whispered that it was unfair to expect her to accept it from him when she didn't know him. And pointed out quietly that he did not even know her truly. He knew the mother that had truly been his, but this wasn't his mother and had not carried the burdens uniquely that his mother had bore thus he could not be expect her to offer that support without some reason to trust him. If anything the lack of information she'd given him just reminded him of how little she probably trusted him ultimately. 

Poe's voice filtered through the hold announcing that they would be landing soon, and Anakin quietly let out a breath. He was suddenly very ready to be done with this mission and to debrief and to get a moment to himself. He was afraid that if he saw his mother he might yell at her even if it wasn't a productive response to his frustration and he knew it. It was even less so in the company of whatever Resistance officers would be at the debrief. He wanted the bacta patch to be off of his arm. He wanted to sort through what had happened to Ben Solo in-so-far as anyone knew. 

But he'd done this often enough with the Jedi at home to know how these sorts of things would go even if he'd never gone through this with the Resistance. As Poe brought the yacht down, and they all undid crash straps and headed for the ramp to debark, Zayna caught his shoulder - the one not covered by a bacta patch. 

"Hey, are you going to tell them in debrief?" 

Anakin hesitated, with a slight furrow as his eyebrows came together. "I haven't decided yet. It's - I just think she knows; She has to know." 

"Maybe she doesn't?" 

"I don't believe that," Anakin said. 

"So she let you go in knowing that you might meet him, and potentially kill him, and never know who he was except for when it was too late?" 

"I figured it out," Anakin said. 

And it had almost gotten him killed. It was as if his mom had taken a leaf out of Obi-Wan Kenobi's book in things to not tell the younger generation when they were going up against the enemy. It didn't really look good on her and Anakin felt like his frustration was justified. He had to admit that if he were Zayna he'd not think it looked very good either and Anakin didn't know how to defend his mother against Zayna's unstated accusations when he really didn't have a good defense for her himself. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked over at Zayna's face. She looked just as skeptical as she had earlier when he'd tried to explain that he didn't use the Force just to lift bags into place. Oddly there was something comforting about that skepticism being directed at him right now. 

"Look, my family, even at home… it's complicated and it has been since before I was born. You should hear some of the stories my Uncle has." He paused. "Or probably has, anyway."

"Family is always complicated," Zayna raised an eyebrow at him. "But that doesn't mean you let them get away with stupid things." 

"I'm not saying I will," he gazed at her intensely trying to read her intentions. "You aren't going to say anything." 

"I said before it wasn't my place. And I said it was General Organa's. But I'm not sure that I was right," Zayna crossed her arms over her chest as she continued. "I think it may have stopped being General Organa's place. She's your Mom right? If all this crazy stuff is true about you being from some parallel version of this universe and Leia Organa and Han Solo are your parents there then in a weird way they were here too. And the First Order killed your father here, and this guy, who works for the First Order, is your brother. And I think that may put some sort of premium on complicated, to be honest, but if your mother _knew_ and she didn't tell you? Then she kept information from you that might have been essential. And if she didn't know - then she's got to learn at some point." 

"I'll consider that," Anakin said honestly, with a frown. He wasn't certain if it was the right thing to do under the circumstances or if he should confront his mother about it later, or if he should ignore the information altogether. He pushed his shoulders back to straighten up and to try to press out some of the knots and tension in his shoulders from the question itself. 

"I guess, what I'm saying is, I won't say anything, but only because I think you have earned the right to be the one to do it." 

Anakin blinked. "I appreciate you giving me the choice."

Zayna looked as if she were thinking better of that decision for a moment, and then she stepped past him and walked through the hall to the ramp. 

Anakin stood as the lone person left on the ship. Zayna had told him more or less exactly what he'd wanted to hear. She'd backed up his feelings, but did that mean it was the right call? Zayna wasn't a Jedi, and she didn't understand the history of their family as well as Anakin did. Then again, if she didn't know it - didn't that make some part of her opinion a little less biased? He closed his eyes for a moment and pressed his fingers to his temple. Straightening again, he headed off the ship. He would have to talk about Kylo Ren as a part of the debriefing. He would just see how his mom reacted, and from there he'd play instincts and try to listen.

"Here he is," Poe looked up as Anakin came down the ramp. "He needs to go see medical before we do debriefing - make certain we didn't completely mess up that arm of his." 

Anakin blinked at the woman that Poe was talking to. With her long white hair and almond eyes, he recognized her, and even though he knew she wouldn't remember him - oddly enough considering that her photographic memory was one of her characteristics - seeing her brought a smile to his face. "Winter?" 

She turned and looked at him with a mild expression. "You know me." 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. Winter had cared for him when he was a very small boy - not much more than a toddler. She'd been a constant in their family lives for most of Anakin's youngest years. He wondered here if she'd been the same - did she know or have memories of the man he'd just fought as the boy, Ben? "Yeah, I do. I guess you've heard about me." 

"Leia told me, yes," Winter said. "Poe said you've been injured, so come with me and we'll get you checked out with medical before you meet with the others." 

Anakin followed her away from the team. She looked much the same as he remembered, but with a few more wrinkles around her eyes. "You weren't here before," he stated. "At least I didn't see you around the base."

"No, I wasn't. I was out on a mission." She looked bemused and she turned her attention to him. "They said you looked like your father, and they're not wrong, but your eyes look like your Uncle, and your nose is more your mother's." 

Anakin shrugged, and then regretted the motion. "Do you still help mom?"

"I work with the Resistance," Winter said. "I have worked as an aide for your mother in the past." 

"When her kids were there?" 

Winter looked at him sharply and didn't answer, leaving Anakin to debate pushing for an answer, or just waiting for another time. In the end the arrival at the medbay made the choice for him. He was left by Winter and told to come to the main communications room when he was finished in Medical and he found himself once again surrounded by med droids and the odd humanoid medical helper. 

The medical workers tsked over the state of his arm, removed the bacta patch, and continued with some work of their own finally concluding it was localized enough that it was unnecessary to put him in the tank particularly considering that many of the other injuries he had supposedly sustained during the fight were way on their way to being healed. As it had been before, Anakin could tell this was of some interest to all of them, but he didn't bother this time trying to explain it. Maybe it wasn't the best to leave the Jedi a complete mystery to the galaxy, but on the other hand, he was pretty certain he didn't have it in him to try to solve the mystery for them tonight - particularly when he might reach the end of the explanation with them all still mystified. 

He was cleared and given another, slightly larger patch for his forearm, then was told that he should return tomorrow for cleaning and review, and probably a new patch at that time. Anakin agreed and headed for the comm room and the debriefing. 

When he arrived Kae was in the middle of explaining to his mother, Admiral Ackbar, a blonde woman he didn't recognize, and a few others that he did - including Winter - about what Sarik had discovered in the files. Anakin slipped in the back by the door and stared up at the map which was a much larger projection than what they'd been able to do on the ship. 

The map was incriminating as part of the First Order, but it was also intimidating. As Anakin looked up at the various points on it, he couldn't help but notice that it spread far further than he might have thought. Once upon a time, the Rebellion had been small dots spread out across a galaxy like this. Now these tables were turned, but Anakin was pretty certain they were turned more insidiously. The support the First Order had gathered was greater than Anakin would have anticipated based upon what he knew about them. Then again, to build something with the capability of the Starkiller base, required resources and support. And it was clear that there was a large number of people throughout the galaxy that supported a more Imperial style of government and if those people fed into supporting the First Order, or supporting organizations that supported the First Order…

"So Anakin can explain a bit about what he found in regards to Kylo Ren." 

Anakin looked up at the sound of Poe Dameron's voice. The pilot had finally noticed him standing by the door and he motioned him forward with a warmth and support that Anakin couldn't help but be grateful for. 

Anakin stepped forward towards the table. Everyone's eyes were on him, but Anakin lifted his gaze to his mother's trying to figure out in the moment before he started to speak if she knew or if she suspected. Her brown eyes didn't look away from his face, but there was a certain hold to her head and Anakin knew almost instantly that she had known. She'd sent him in - _knowing_. 

His brow furrowed and he took the final step to the table and placed both of his hands down on it. 

Others didn't know what he'd found out. Even Kae and Poe - and did his mother deserve to be outed in front of all of them? Was it even the smart call to make? He looked over at Zayna, whose arms were over her chest, her lips quirked up in a thoughtful look. Zayna had said it was his call, and Anakin was his father's son. There was no point in revealing a hand until you knew what the pot looked like. He moistened his lips and looked up taking in the full circumference of the table. It was a measured sweep of the room the type he'd seen his Uncle do a hundred times before the Jedi Order, his mother before the Senate, and then he took a breath and began to speak. 

He told them about what had happened - how Zayna had found the files that led them to the hidden chambers, how it had felt as if it had once been part of the Empire - or perhaps was currently part of the First Order, how they had found signs that the First Order had been there, and how they had found signs that Dark Jedi had studied there - Anakin left out the details of what had happened in the chamber with the holocron - but how the levels had been empty of any beings whatsoever until they'd stumbled across Kylo Ren and his shuttle. He relayed the basic details of the fight, leaving out that Ren had taunted him about Vader, and Anakin had done so back, to finish, with how Zayna had really saved both of them by having gotten Poe to the bay doors when he did. 

"There wasn't any easy way to subdue him - we were too evenly matched at that point, but I suspect he has an injury or two he won't forget soon," Anakin finished. _For better or for worse._

"But also they know we have this information," Ackbar frowned in his gravelly voice. 

"They would have anyway," the blonde woman next to Leia spoke up. She seemed to be about Leia's age, lithe, and with the command of someone who was used to being in a position of authority. "We stole this, and it wasn't a copy/replace, so they'll know that we have this with or without the run-in with Kylo Ren." 

"Which means we don't have a lot of time before these networks will start collapsing." This came from Kae, with a crisp certainty that Anakin had come to expect from her.

"It's difficult to erase every connection," Winter said calmly. "Determining what to do with this data should be our first priority." 

"Agreed," Leia said. "Winter, I'll leave it to you to assemble a team to work on this." 

"Anything else, General?" Poe asked. 

"No, you're all dismissed," Leia said firmly. 

The room began to break-up with the Resistance officers around the table leaving for their individual jobs. Poe turned to talk to Winter, and Anakin caught Zayna's eyes across the room. He could tell that she didn't entirely approve of the fact that he hadn't said anything, but true to her word she hadn't interrupted him to tell anything. Should he have said? But instinct still said no regardless of whether it was Jedi instinct or Solo instinct and Anakin couldn't help but feel that the time to say something wasn't yet. 

As he looked away he realized his mother was working her way towards the door and he broke away from the table himself, catching Sarik gently on the shoulder as he squeezed past the rodian, and rushed past him to catch his mother before she got too far. 

He never knew exactly how to refer to her. 'General' felt so formal, while 'Mom' didn't feel quite right either an in all honesty Anakin wasn't certain he'd gained the permission to use it freely. If there was some sort of test before he got recognized as her son all he sensed for certain was that he hadn't passed it yet. In the end he went for the formal. 

"General," he called down the hall and had the slight vindication of seeing Leia's shoulders tighten slightly. 

She turned around: "What is it, Anakin?" 

Anakin stepped up in front of her, his eyes on her face with a boldness he might not have had with his own mother. "I asked you very specifically for all of the information you had on Kylo Ren." 

"I gave you -"

"Don't lie to me," Anakin pushed back. "You _know_. I know you know. I can tell you know, and you didn't give me information - information that would have changed everything when I ran into him." 

"It would have only distracted you," Leia threw back at him. "I needed you clear on the other parts of the mission." 

" _Distracted_ me?" Anakin frowned, and raised his shoulders, taking some advantage of the fact that he was now taller than his mother. "You think not knowing didn't distract me when I had a lightsaber at my throat? You didn't tell me you had a son in the first place. I had to find out from someone else that you had children at _all_." 

"I don't know you," Leia's voice held a steely edge and despite the fact that she was shorter than Anakin, normally her posture would have caused him to shrink back, but the last time Anakin had been this angry had been after Centerpoint on Yavin IV; he held his ground.

A pilot strode down the corridor, and Anakin stepped back to the right hand side of the column to allow the woman to pass between them while keeping his words for a moment as she passed. The frustration of not having been told about Ben and Breha and about having lost _his_ siblings and a mother and father who actually knew him to a different universe - something that, to be fair, was not remotely the fault of the woman in front of him - all of it swirled together with his frustration at not being told who Kylo Ren really was and of knowing what Ren had done to his father in this universe. As the pilot turned the corner Anakin stepped forward again to push into Leia's space. 

"What if I'd killed him?" Anakin glared down at her. "What if I'd killed him - not knowing?" 

Leia didn't step back, but her posture softened into a droop, shoulders hanging slightly lower than they had a mere second before. 

"And if you had known? Would you have allowed him to kill you?" Leia said. "If it came to that?" 

"I'd have had the information I needed to keep it from coming to that in the first place! I would have approached him completely differently! Fortunately, Poe showed up." He stared at her trying to figure out what she was thinking. He didn't know what he had expected from her, but the truth on this seemed as if it shouldn't have been too much to ask. Particularly when he'd been tasked with trying to uncover the dark Jedi involved in the First Order in the first place. Particularly when he'd asked her straight up for everything she knew about Kylo Ren. 

"This?" He pushed the shirt sleeve up to show her the bacta patch. "This is the, 'I didn't know he was my brother' scar. I guess I should be thankful it's not a 'I didn't know he was my brother' robotic arm. But it's fine. You don't know me; I'm not your kid, not really; I'm just an expendable Jedi. You can send me off to try to solve your problems." 

The words landed heavy in the air between them and as Anakin turned and picked his feet up to move down the corridor away from Leia, he realized too late that he should have kept his tongue. 

"Anakin." 

He stopped, his eyes closed against a storm that threatened to fall, but he didn't turn around.

"I'm sorry. Perhaps I was wrong to keep it from you." 

" _Perhaps_?" Anakin questioned irritably, unready to extend her the grace of accepting her apology. 

"I don't know you, Anakin. I don't know what you're capable of in the Force, or in general," Leia stepped up behind him. "I don't know what kind of Jedi you are, or what kind of man you are, and I had to make a call based on what I did know." 

Anakin turned around finally. His brows furrowed into a frustrated glare. "I'm your son," he said firmly. "I'm who you trained me to be. Everything I know, everything I trust and believe in, everything that I do. I learned it from you and from Dad. I may not truly be your son, but I'm trying." His throat stuck and he raised his hand to massage the back of his neck gently. "You're the only family I have now. I'd just like for us to treat each other like family if it's not too much to ask." 

Leia didn't say anything and as frustration ebbed into a quiet disappointment Anakin wondered if he was simply asking for the impossible after all. They might run DNA tests and prove lineage. Anakin had no doubt it would match up, but genetics was not the only aspect of family and maybe family was something he'd always taken for granted before because it was something that he'd always just had. He pressed his lips together dropping his hands to his hips and his eyes to the ground. He was uncertain what else to say; probably he'd already said too much. When he looked back up to Leia her expression had softened. 

"You even stand like him," she said softly. 

Self-conscious, Anakin straightened up. 

"I'm not your only family," Leia added, with a brusqueness that covered emotion. 

Anakin stared at her for a moment. He would have thought that was obvious. He had his Uncle and obviously a brother she hadn't told him about. But she _was_ the only family that he had here. "I know," he said finally. 

Silence spread between them leaving Anakin to feel like he should say something and make some accommodation for his mother. After all he was hardly the only one who had lost family. And he at least had the distinction of knowing that - well, probably - his siblings and his parents were still alive in some alternate universe to this one. Yet every possible set of words were considered and then rejected leaving only the practicality of: "I should check-in with Poe." 

For a beat he thought the perfect phrase might pop into his mind, but his speaking hadn't been the key that unlocked the right thing to say. He turned, leaving her alone in the corridor, passing several pilots headed back through the mess hall. A prick of failure threatened, but mostly it was overwhelmed by a wave of relief that he could just leave.

Poe had been running post-op system checks in the main hangar, and Anakin found him easily. There were a smattering of technicians working with him, but after a brief protestation that Anakin should be resting from his injuries, Poe had accepted him. There was a relief to the preciseness of systems checks that Anakin had run a thousand times before, recognizing areas where the ship might need to be repaired or cared for before it was sent back out in the field. They had taken fire in the escape from Raxus Prime after all, and there were places - even a few that Anakin found without any of the systems checks that he turned over to the Resistance techs for more consistent working. He'd always had a knack for looking at machines and seeing what they needed. Even as a young boy, an apprentice only, he'd been able to look at a ship and tell you if it was space-worthy. Today it came in handy as they reviewed the yacht for repairs needed.

As he finished up, he stepped out of the main hangar doors into the cooler night air and he shivered a little as the air hit his skin, cool after the heat of engines in the hangar itself. Anakin looked up at the stars trying to pick out familiar ones in a sky that was as familiar and yet as unfamiliar as this universe. He had never spent any time on Lothal - in truth none at all not even a few hours on some mission or visit because of his parents or the Jedi - it was a reminder of just how large the galaxy was. Even as the son of the Chief of State, with the dozens upon dozens of diplomatic state visits his mother had taken him and Jacen and Jaina on, even as a Jedi Knight that sought to bring justice and peace to a galaxy desperately sliding into darkness, Anakin Solo had never sat foot on Lothal until this moment in this universe. 

He slid his hand in his jacket pocket, but the keycard that provided him access to the base was in his pocket so he stepped away from the light of the increasingly empty hangar. Instead of heading towards the main corridors and back towards the mess hall to grab something to eat, Anakin moved away from the hangar itself, down the large platform for gathering X-wings ready for take-off, and off the paved areas and up into the rolling hills that hid the largest parts of the hangars. The further up he walked, the easier it was to see the stars. 

Anakin pulled his jacket around him a little more tightly and tilted his head back to look up at the light piercing the darkness overhead. The stars numbered in the hundreds of thousands into the millions and billions, and it occurred to him if he was staring at the stars from a planet and didn't recognize them - how much more would he be able to stare at the people on a planet and not know them either? How did you help people you didn't know? 

It was a question that hadn't occurred to him in exactly this way, although it had been a question he'd been turning over with the Yuuzhan Vong ever since Yavin IV. Beings tended to have universal variables and needs - until they didn't - which had been what the Yuuzhan Vong had wrought upon the galaxy and nobody had known how to respond. Here in a universe away from his own he realized that he was trying to make universal upon his mother what might not be universal. Ubiquitous likely was her own need for love and connection and the regrets she might feel. The determination and drive was clearly equally a part of his mother here as his mother at home. But maybe not what parenting had been like. What she had given her children was perhaps not universal. When he said that he had learned everything from her, it wasn't untrue, but it might not mean the same thing to him that it would for his mother. 

"You don't know her," he said softly as he stared up at the stars. "Don't make her carry the ghost of a woman she isn't." 

The stars didn't answer him back, but then Anakin hadn't expected that. His thoughts drifted to the brother that was somewhat easier to think of as not his brother than Leia was easier to think of as not his mother. Was it selfish that the only thing he could think is at least the boy had not been named Anakin? At least it wasn't him - a version of him that had fallen straight from his nightmares and inflicted that dark fantasy onto the galaxy. At least it wasn't _him_ that had murdered his father because of the Dark side. 

_But it could have been. It could be._

The whisper bounced around his head and Anakin didn't chase it away. Instead he wondered if he could have become that in a different life. If he still could… and if that knowing wasn't part of why his mother treated him with so much caution. The possibility was there and Anakin knew it. Most of the time he didn't even deny the possibility, so much as the actuality, but he had fears and discouraged moments, and tonight - staring into stars that weren't familiar - he certainly felt discouraged enough to wonder who he might have become had he made different choices - who he might become yet. 

_A Jedi. I am a Jedi. Like my grandfather, like my Uncle - I am a Jedi._

A prickle on the back of his neck brought him back to reality and he turned around. Kaydel Ko was standing behind him; a silhouette against the small lights from the base. 

"I saw you leave, and I thought you might be hungry," she handed out a jogan fruit that fit just barely in the palm of her hand. 

Anakin looked up at her and back at the fruit and nodded with a smile. "I guess I kind of am." 

"They stop serving in the mess hall so I thought I'd bring you something at least. I've a couple of protein bars in my pocket too if you want them." 

"Thanks," Anakin gave her a smile. She'd stepped close enough that he could now see her expressions in the light of the stars and the moon that was beginning to rise in the far horizon. "You didn't have to, but I'm glad you did." He took the fruit and took a bite and added. "This is good."

"It's local," Kaydel Ko smiled. "So it didn't travel very far to get here." 

"Now I know why they set up base here," Anakin chuckled, taking another bite. 

"Also, I brought you this one," Kaydel Ko reached in her pocket and held out another jogan fruit, this one slightly smaller. 

"Really one is fine," Anakin protested with a grin although the fruit was amazing, sweet and juicy, and precisely the sort of thing his day had needed. 

"It's not for you," Kaydel Ko shrugged. "Your Mom didn't eat either and I thought you might want to take her one." 

Anakin's smile froze, and he lifted the fruit to his mouth to take another bite, so that when the smile slipped out, it seemed like a natural progression of everything that he was doing. Why would Kaydel Ko think he needed to take anything to his mother? The image of pilots and maintenance workers walking past the two of them in the hall floated back into his head, and he brought the fruit down and looked over at her. "Does the entire base know?" 

"I would guess not the entire base, but a fair number do," Kaydel Ko looked sympathetic. "Nobody knows for certain what about, but when you have an argument in the middle of a public corridor… Well." 

"Shit," Anakin sighed. 

"You want to talk about it?" 

"Not really," Anakin frowned, but he knew that wasn't a viable long-term option. He sighed, and sank down onto the ground, criss crossing his legs and looking up at her with a nod. "But if you want to join me…"

For a moment he crunched on the jogan fruit and then he could sense Kaydel Ko sinking down to sit beside him. They sat in comfortable silence as Anakin took a bite, and then another. He wasn't certain how much Kaydel Ko actually knew about what he and his mother had been arguing about, or the entire base. He rather hoped that part had been given a little more privacy than the other, but there hadn't been anyone in the corridor when he had confronted her about that, so perhaps. Anakin couldn't even say why he felt like it was important to keep that quiet - maybe just - as he'd looked at the histories he'd seen how Darth Vader had been used against his mother in her political career, and this was her son - it would be just as bad. 

"Do you ever just not know what the right decision on something is?" He finally said aloud. "I think I used to figure that I'd get to be a Jedi Knight, and I'd just know things. Like Uncle Luke just seemed to know things. Or even just - being an adult, I'd have stuff figured out, and of course there would be decisions to be made, things I'd have to choose between, but they wouldn't be impossible decisions. I'd think about it, and I'd know what to do." 

"But instead you think about it, and you don't know what to do, so you do something, and you just hope it's the right thing," Kaydel Ko suggested. 

Anakin looked over at her and a resigned smile crossed his face. "Yeah, pretty much." For a moment he was silent, finishing off the last of the jogan fruit, and then he turned, one leg pulled up under him so that he was facing her more than sitting beside her. "I think I tell myself sometimes, that if I'd been older or wiser, I'd have done things differently. But recently I've begun to question that. I'm sure that there's some truth to it in some cases. But also, I don't feel wiser... ?" 

"You are only, what? Nineteen?" Kaydel Ko shrugged. "You are allowed some room to grow." 

_Eighteen_ , but Anakin realized he didn't really want to correct her on that, so instead he stared off into the distance. Somewhere, closer to a town, a spaceship of a larger size was taking off and he could see the running lights as it moved up through the atmosphere. "I remember standing in the middle of a meeting of the Jedi Order. Uncle Luke was in front of everyone - the most senior Jedi Master in the room. There are seventy people in that room maybe? Most of the Order experienced enough at the time to help protect a galaxy in desperate need of it, and I could feel Uncle Luke… waver. Like a break in the shields before you redirect extra power to boost them, you know? And I think I realized then -- or maybe it was the beginning of my realization? -- That adulthood didn't bring the knowing of what to do or how to do it. And beyond that even that the people I thought always knew… maybe didn't either." 

"Is this about what happened with your mom?" 

"Kind of," Anakin shrugged and twisted a peel from the fruit in his fingers as he looked off in the distance again. "And kind of about what happened while I was gone. I'm - I have information, and I don't know exactly what to do about it." 

"Maybe you don't have to decide right now," Kaydel Ko looked over at him. "You did just get back. You just talked to your mom about whatever it is, right?" 

"Yeah, but it's the sort of thing, I don't think I can wait it out forever." Anakin looked over at her. "I'm going to have to make a call. Sooner probably rather than later. Cause as long as people like Kylo Ren are involved in the First Order, that's going to be more dangerous for the Republic and obviously for the Resistance." 

"You can let the bacta heal your arm at least," Kaydel Ko said, and there was an impish grin on her face as she did. 

"You know, I'm not good at sitting still," Anakin said, a grin spreading across his own face. 

"Somehow, I knew that about you," Kaydel Ko's eyes twinkled. "Something about that Solo surname maybe." 

"And here I was going to try not to be predictable," he shook his head, but for the first time since he'd arrived back on Lothal, he felt like he could maybe manage through some of what he knew was coming. 

"I doubt you're ever completely predictable," Kaydel Ko laughed back at him. 

Anakin decided he liked the idea of surprising her as a thing he could work towards. Family was definitely more than blood, and he supposed he'd known that before with Tahiri, but here where there was no family and that family that might count by blood was so impossible to make sense of, people like Poe and Kaydel Ko had offered him warm acceptance and he was grateful for it. Plus, Kaydel Ko was… he snuck a glance out of the corner of his eyes. Yeah, she was definitely cute and maybe tonight he wasn't messing things up quite so badly as he felt like he had that first time they'd met in the gymnasium. 

"I guess you can ask me again in a few months," he quirked an eyebrow at her, setting his two hands behind him and leaning back so that he could look back up at the stars. 

He really should take the jogan fruit to his mother, but he wasn't quite ready to go back inside. When he had first arrived he'd been first grateful for the alone time, then tired of it, then lonely, and then on the way back from Raxus Prime he'd been grateful for it - grateful that somehow Zayna had understood that he needed it and had offered him the opportunity for it that he would not have taken for himself. But right now, though the space from the base and the Resistance and all that it brought had been necessary, he was grateful for the easy, and pretty much undeniably pleasant, companionship of Kaydel Ko. 

"Do they look the same?" 

He looked over to see her watching him as he stared up into the sky and he considered. "Not from here. I mean, maybe they do, but believe it or not I'd never been on Lothal in my galaxy." 

"Never?" 

"It's a big galaxy, and I never had reason to be. I'm assuming at some point or another Mom may have been for diplomatic reasons, but it was never when I was around or old enough to remember. So, I can't really answer that question. Now if we were on Coruscant… or Yavin IV." 

Yavin IV would be really interesting to visit considering how well Anakin knew that system, but right now it held as many painful memories as it did good ones. One hand went automatically to his lightsaber and the lambent it contained within it - a Yuuzhan Vong grown biotech that he'd had to shape to work within his lightsaber after his own crystal had been broken. 

"The star charts are mostly the same, but there are little discrepancies. It's interesting to wonder about what caused the changes, what series of events in this galaxy were different enough from ones in mine to create differences in planets and stars, you know?" 

Kaydel Ko nodded. "I've never been to Yavin IV, although Poe Dameron grew up there." 

"Did he?" Anakin turned startled. Somehow it had never come up in his conversations with the other man. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, his parents settled there after the Rebellion settled into the Republic. They had a ranch or something." 

"A colony on Yavin IV," Anakin considered this. "I guess that's not where the Jedi training happened then." 

"That's where you trained with your Uncle at home?"

"Yeah." Anakin's gaze was snatched upwards by a shot of light moving across the sky. It seemed a ship was coming in and for a moment he watched before the ship flew low enough to be illuminated by a spotlight on one of the base's watch tower. The spotlight was quick - obviously a security check on the ship - but it was enough to spark recognition. "That's a Corellian light freighter," the realization sprang to his lips, and he sat up, his eyes now following the shadow and the light of subspace engines across the back of the ship. "That's the _Falcon_." 

Part of him knew that it was possible he was grasping at straws. He hadn't thought to ask his mother what had happened to his Father's ship. Perhaps some part of him had supposed it was on base somewhere, although he realized that if he'd really believed that he might have asked for access to it to go find his Uncle -- not, and there was a spike of resentment at the thought, that he would have been given access to it -- But Anakin Solo had spent hours working on the _Falcon_ with his father and with Chewbacca. It was dark, he couldn't tell all the details, it _could_ be any YT-1300 light freighter, but Anakin didn't think it was -- it was the _Falcon_. He would have bet an entire Sabacc pot on it. 

"Come on," He jumped to his feet, extending a hand down to Kaydel Ko. If it was the _Falcon_ , then it had to be Chewbacca maybe. Anakin knew he was alive, and there was a tightness in his chest at the thought of seeing the Wookiee again, even if it wouldn't be his Chewbacca. 

"Are you sure?" Kaydel Ko asked as she took the offered hand and hopped easily to her feet and followed after him. 

"As sure as I am of anything," Anakin threw over his shoulder as he clambered down the hill towards the outdoor landing strips -- and perhaps towards a hope of home.


	10. Chapter 10

Anakin was aware of Kaydel Ko still following him as he dashed down into the base towards the _Falcon_ , but he was more aware of the _Falcon_ herself flying low into the base, almost as if the ship were a presence that were living and breathing rather than a machine he shouldn't have been able to sense. He pushed around a group of Bothan Resistance officers, skirted some supply crates, and crossed the empty strip faster than decorum would typically recommend. 

It made no sense to expect anything more out of a ship than he might have expected of anything else in this Universe. It was an inanimate object without the ability to remember anything that happened here or elsewhere, then again, maybe that was part of the appeal. The _Falcon_ would be the _Falcon_. It wouldn't mistrust him, or have no memories of him when it should have had some. The ship itself might look different, or _be_ different, and he might have to get reacquainted - like he had when he'd been relearning how to fly an X-wing - but it wasn't going to treat him differently than he expected. It was a ship, and if he could fly it, then it would accept him. 

He stopped at the edge of where the light freighter was setting down and stared up at a ship that looked more like his memories of the _Falcon_ from when he was a boy than it did his most recent memories. The Yuuzhan Vong had changed his universe, but at times he forgot just how much. But even as he looked at it, he knew there were other differences that had shaped this one. 

"I forgot what it looks like when it isn't black," he breathed as Kaydel Ko came up behind him. 

"It's black?" 

"My Dad had it painted a while back because of the war. It's got some other differences too, but I'm sure it's her." 

"It is the _Falcon_. How did you know it was here?" 

Anakin turned around at the sound of his mother's voice. She was walking up behind them both, her expression inscrutible - even to Anakin.

"We were sitting up on the hill and we saw it fly in," Kaydel Ko answered the question for him. 

This was probably good because despite the fact that Anakin was pretty certain there was none intended in this particular question right now all he could feel from his mother was suspicion and a lack of trust. He was going to have to get over that, because him being suspicious and closed back, wasn't likely to encourage his mother to trust him more. But an answer felt important somehow, so he shrugged. "I just, I guess I'd know her anywhere. Who…?" 

Leia hesitated and Anakin could feel irritation blossoming as he whirled around to look at her. 

"Chewbacca and Rey," Leia said after a moment of his stare. "They went to find Luke, and I wasn't expecting them back quite this soon." 

"Chewbacca?" Anakin's voice felt high and thready despite himself. He could feel his mother's gaze on him. He had mentioned Chewbacca's death to her before, but not the circumstances of that death. It was a potent reminder that for all he didn't know her, also she really, truly didn't know him. He needed to treat her with more patience; they were both doing their best after all. He swallowed and looked back towards the ship as if he might be able to see who was in the cockpit from here, but it was dark and impossible, and anyway the ramps were lowering and he couldn't help stepping forward. 

He couldn't talk to his mom about Chewbacca's death - not right now. Chewie had died in his universe and it had been Anakin's fault. Well, no, it hadn't truly been his fault and deep down Anakin knew that and maybe even accepted it as truth, but it still _felt_ like his fault. It still felt as if he might have been able to have done something differently - piloted with more skill and daring - even if there was no skill that would have gotten Chewie back from them and not swallowed the _Falcon_ up in the wreckage of Sernpidal. His father had blamed him, and perhaps that had been more difficult to live with because Anakin also blamed himself. If he had not, then his father's blame might have hurt less… maybe. 

The laughter that came from the ramp wasn't Chewie's though. It was that of a girl, a girl that stepped down with her gaze focused back into the ship. "Well you set the landing locks then!" and then she looked up and her eyes brightened as she saw Leia and moved towards her even as Leia moved towards the ship and the girl. 

The two met in the middle with an embrace and for a moment they held in that embrace, and then Leia pulled back. "You look good," she said quietly, and she turned to put an arm around the younger woman's waist, turning them both to face Anakin. 

Anakin stepped forward and as he got a better glimpse of the girl in front of him his breath caught in his throat at the similarities. "Jaina?" 

This garnered an eyebrow raise from Leia and then the briefest of smiles. "No, but not far off either."

"This is him then," the younger woman was eyeing him with an open gaze. 

"Yes, this is Anakin. Anakin this is Rey, your sister." 

"I've been filled in, sort of," Rey stepped forward towards him and he found himself with her arms wrapped around him in what was probably the first genuine hug he'd received here. It was quick, but warm, and she pulled back with a smile on her face. "But it seems sort of incredible to me, and if Luke hadn't seemed to accept it, then I'm not certain I could have, but now that I see you, it makes perfect sense." 

Anakin opened his mouth to respond and was startled out of any response - which perhaps was not all bad since he wasn't certain whether or not he was going to come up with a coherent one that wasn't ten thousand questions - by a man's voice behind them both.

"Rey!" 

Anakin and Rey turned as one to see a man running towards them. He looked back at his sister's face in time to see her eyes light up and she began to run towards the newcomer.

"Finn! You're all right. I knew you'd be all right! Oh thank goodness!"

The two met in the middle, several yards away from the smaller group and Finn swung Rey around in a giant hug, and the two started talking at each other so quickly, that Anakin would have had to work to keep up. But his attention was caught by a figure out of the corner of his eyes, tall and covered with brown fur from head to toe, the Wookiee was achingly familiar, more so than the matter of fact gaze in Rey's eyes or the shape of the _Falcon_. 

It was Chewie. _Chewie_. Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes as he stepped forward even as he reminded himself for the umpteenth time that Chewie wouldn't know him. But then the Wookiee looked over at him and glanced over him up and down, and something in his  
dark eyes looked welcoming as he spoke, and it didn't hurt that the traditional Shyriiwook sounded like heaven to Anakin. 

* _Anakin yes? You're Han's son._ *

"Yeah," Anakin's face broke into a smile. "Can - I know this is… but can I give you a hug?" 

The Wookiee looked at Leia but only for an instant before he then held out his arms. * _You look like him._ *

Anakin stepped forward and buried his face against Chewbacca's fur, a bubble of laughter pushing up from his gut and breaking through the tears that were threatening. "Everyone keeps saying that!" 

"Well, because it seems to be true." 

Anakin could hear his mother's soft musing, but it didn't matter as much as the warm, living presence of Chewbacca all around him. It wasn't home exactly, and Chewie didn't feel quite the same in the Force, and the hug was perhaps not quite as warm or strong as Chewbacca might have given him at home, but at the same time it filled him with hope. And maybe his mother seemed a little less on edge as well which held a power of its own. 

He pulled back finally, not wanting to take advantage of Chewie's willingness to have the hug in the first place, and when he did he wiped his hands gently over his eyes. "Sorry, I just - it's been a while," he explained, glancing over at his mother. Had she mentioned anything that Anakin had told her to Chewie and Rey? Clearly she'd mentioned something about him because neither of them seemed to be surprised by his presence. 

"Finn, have you met Anakin?" Rey had rejoined them and the man that she'd run to hug was standing by her side now. 

"I've not had the pleasure." Finn looked up and squarely met Anakin's gaze with his own. 

"No, me either," Anakin reached out his hand to Finn. "You're here with the Resistance?" 

"Yeah," Finn said. "I was healing up for a bit, and then I was here helping out. And I've heard of you? Poe mentioned you, yeah? But I hadn't had the chance to meet you myself yet." 

"Well, a friend of Poe's is definitely a friend of mine," Anakin grinned, offering Finn a firm handshake. "But I don't understand how - I mean, Rey…" 

"It's kind of a long story, and it's one I've only begun to piece together with Luke's help," she said. "But I remember a lot more now." 

"You're really Breha?" Kaydel Ko was still there, standing slightly back from the rest of the group, but she stepped forward now to peer at Rey as if she were trying to make a connection between the young girl she'd told Anakin about and the woman standing in front of her. 

"Yeah, I really am. And I remember you, a little - a very little," Rey offered Kaydel Ko a grin. "At least I think I do. You used to play with us when we were younger?" 

"Yeah, it's been a long time ago." 

"It has been," Rey said. "Memories have been difficult to pull back in, but I've had some help, and it's funny what leads from one place to another." 

"Memories would be kind of trails like that," Anakin nodded. "That's one of the reasons why memory stuff can be so tricky." 

"You're a Jedi, right?" Rey bit her lip as she looked over at him as if she were trying to sort him out. "A real trained one?" 

"Yeah, a real trained one, and everything. But you, you've got a lightsaber. Grandfather's lightsaber? So you are too, right?" Anakin could feel his mother tense next to them, whether it was the training or his grandfather? He wasn't certain what had made her tense up most. 

"I don't know if I'd go with _trained_ exactly. More... I'm figuring it out." 

"Everyone starts somewhere," Anakin shrugged easily. "It's the journey that's really important, not where you start it from." 

Rey's cheeks dimpled as she smiled. "I want to talk to you and figure out everything! Luke could sense some things in dreams or visions, but he didn't share everything with me." 

"Did he come with you?" 

Rey looked over at Leia and then back to Anakin and shook her head, sobering. "No. We, uh, we probably should talk about some of this somewhere else." 

"Yes," Leia agreed curtly. "That's not a bad a plan. And perhaps tomorrow rather than tonight as we have most of us had a long day. Finn, you can show Rey to her room, and I'll show Chewie." 

* _I'll sleep on the ship_ ,* Chewie rumbled to Leia. 

She considered this for a moment, and nodded: "That's not entirely surprising, and certainly acceptable. We'll have time in the morning to talk through some of the details. And I know you'll all have a lot of questions for each other, as I have as well." 

Rey squeezed Finn's hand, and then stepped over to wrap her arm around Leia's waist easily, as she turned back towards the base. 

"Can I…?" Anakin looked up at Chewie, and then his eyes fell on the _Falcon_. "Can I walk through her?" 

Chewie looked over at Rey who had turned back around at the question and she shrugged and nodded with a brief smile at Anakin. " Go ahead. I'll see you tomorrow. I want to know everything." 

"Same," he grinned back at her, and despite the nervousness about stepping through the _Falcon_ 's doors there was that burst of hope that he'd felt before. Like Poe, Rey seemed ready to accept him easily. Or maybe he was just hoping for something so badly that he was making things up, but he didn't think so. Something in her mannerisms - in the way she easily swept her arm around Leia's waist and the bright gaze she gave Finn - suggested that she might accept Anakin too. He turned back to follow Chewie up the ramp and into the ship. 

Anakin stepped up into the entrance and was silent for a moment as he glanced down the corridor. He could feel Chewie behind him, but he too stayed silent almost as if he recognized that Anakin really needed this moment to himself, even if he wasn't alone strictly speaking. The noises from the base faded away as Anakin focused in on the ship herself. He knew the _Falcon_ so well that he could feel little things out of place - well or maybe not so much out of place as just differently put together in the first place. Choices that had been made by his Dad and Chewie over the years that had led to a different ship - and a few repairs in the subspace engines that maybe needed to be made yet - he'd have to talk to Chewie about those. 

* _Your Han has this ship too_?* Chewbacca's low rumble filled the ship's corridor. 

"Yeah, this ship is home," Anakin looked up at Chewie with a wistful smile on his face as he reached out to press his hand against the side of the wall. "I wasn't born on it, but pretty damn close, really. So many of the most important moments of my life either started here, or this ship was part of them." Including losing Chewie, but he didn't want to think about that now. 

"Dad had painted her black at home. We're fighting a war, against an extragalactic species known as the Yuuzhan Vong. They're lethal, and they've destroyed so much," Anakin's voice tightened, knowing he was babbling and not liking it, but somehow doing so right now felt as if it were the only way to keep from sitting down in the middle of the corridor and bursting into tears. "Planets, just vanished because they've pulled them apart. So, Dad painted her black - to help keep her less visible. It's so weird to see her the color I remember her from when I was a kid." 

* _Is it just you?_ *

"Just me?" Anakin questioned and then he realized. "No. No,I'm the youngest. Jacen and Jaina - they're a year and a half older than me. We're all Jedi. Not… like here." 

The murmur that came from Chewie's mouth was could have been one of agreement, or sympathy, Anakin couldn't tell, but it was also laced with a pain that Anakin couldn't help but pick up on with how attuned he was to Chewbacca at the moment. He reached over, his hand on Chewie's arm. "Mom didn't say how long ago it was, but I'm sorry. You two - should always be inseparable, in any galaxy." The words felt caught in his throat and he had to stop talking before his brain started focusing on the utter unfairness of either Chewie or his Dad one not living to old age. 

Anakin turned to the front and started down the corridor instead of dwelling. Even without his ability to sense the mechanics in the Force ship was different. She looked cared for in different places, and worn in different places than what he was used to. As he peeked his head inside a crew bunk he realized that this bunk was Chewie's where at home it had been three bunks for him and Jaina and Jacen even though with a pang of loss Anakin couldn't remember the last time all three of them had been on board the _Falcon_ together.

* _Rey keeps the main one now_ ,* Chewie filled in for him. 

"Yeah, of course she does," Anakin walked down to the galley. "This is so weird. It's like home, except not. I don't know what I expected. But how could a ship be so different than what I knew?" 

* _It was on Jakku for some time. Han spent a good six years looking for it. Rey brought it back to him._ *

This gave Anakin pause and he looked over at the Wookiee. "Seriously? He lost the _Falcon_?" 

The Wookiee rumbled his opinion of this and Anakin raised his eyebrows and looked around the main lounge. 

The idea of his dad being without the _Falcon_ for any reason inconceivable. On the other hand, it had felt impossible to come to terms with the idea of the _Falcon_ without Chewie, and his Dad without Chewie. Anakin stood in the quiet of the room for a moment. "Is there this sort of cl-cl-cl noise when you go from sublight to hyperspace?" 

Chewie chuckled mirth and agreement rolled into one sound. 

Anakin leaned against the frame of the door and stared at the room, a grin crossing his lips as he did so. Even with the differences, more than anyplace else thus far, the _Falcon_ felt like he could find home here. Even with the differences, and they were there - a panel that had been replaced, probably off a Sorosuub personal luxury yacht if Anakin were guessing correctly, or a fan that appeared as if it had been salvaged, and possibly salvaged again, but even with that Anakin could look into the room and see his Mom, his brother and his sister in his mind's eye. Times when they were all a lot happier and when there hadn't been a war, or the fracturing that had followed the invasion. Sometimes Anakin wondered if that would have been avoidable, or even had they not been at Sernpidal - even if he could go back and make them not be at Sernpidal somehow - would the family still have fractured from ideals and beliefs? Certainly he and Jacen had seemed incapable of coming to agreements, and that had been nothing to do with Chewie. For an instant in this room and this place they were all there in his mind's eye. The smile held for a moment and then he looked back over at Chewie who was still standing there regarding him. 

"This is going to sound weird," Anakin said quietly. "But can I say 'I'm sorry', without you asking why?" 

Chewie tilted his head at him and the rumbled affirmation was enough. 

"It's not about my Dad, although I'm sorry about that too. The two of you are - I have the hardest time thinking of you not being together. My entire life it's been both of you. You were almost like an Uncle… and I know that you don't know me at all, and I don't expect you to treat me like that, just - believe me when I say it's really good to see you again." 

Chewie's only response to this was to nod and to keep watching Anakin and Anakin stood back up, one smooth roll off of the door from his hip to his shoulder. 

"Can I - go into the cockpit? Is that okay?" 

Chewie rumbled again, a joke about him not taking off with the ship and Anakin looked back over his shoulder, a quick lopsided grin pulled up to his lips as he did so, an amused pretended offence easily affected. "Hey, me?" 

Like everything else, the cockpit was the same and different, and Anakin slid into the pilot's seat for a while, because while everything else might be different - this felt the same. This felt precisely the same as it always had. If Rey had been piloting, and Anakin very much got the impression that the _Falcon_ had moved to her, as well it should have done, she hadn't yet changed anything. Had his dad met Rey? There were so many things Anakin just hadn't asked, or didn't know, but he suspected Rey would be willing to answer them - a recognition that was a nice change of pace. 

Behind him Chewie rumbled something about turning in for the night and needing to close up the ramp, and Anakin pulled himself back to the present. 

"Yeah, sorry, hey thanks, Chewie. This was… really good. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" 

He stood up and moved towards the cockpit door where Chewie was standing, head bowed as it always was because the cockpit wasn't quite tall enough for him to stand straight up. And as Anakin moved to go past him he found himself wrapped in Wookiee arms for the second time this evening, and this time the tears forced themselves to the corner of his eyes and Anakin didn't stop them. When he finally pulled back, his cheeks felt hot and wet, and he was pretty certain he looked a mess, but somehow he couldn't find it in his heart to care. 

* _It is Rey's ship now, not mine, but you are welcome in my tree, young one._ *

Anakin nodded, fighting down a new surge of emotion, "Thank you, Chewie. Good night." 

Rey was easily found the next morning sandwiched between Kaydel Ko on one side and Finn on the other with Poe seated across from the three of them. Rey waved at Anakin as he walked in and he waved back as he headed to grab food from the line. 

As he waited for food his attention was drawn to Kae standing at the entrance of the mess hall but ultimately it was the woman Kae was talking to who really caught his attention. A familiar figure with red-gold hair, wearing a practical dark flight-suit, and a blaster holster on her leg. From this distance it looked just like his Aunt, but Anakin hadn't heard anyone mention Mara's name. A tap on his shoulder pulled his attention away from the woman who might be his aunt to an X-wing pilot directly behind him. 

"Hey, sorry, can I get through there?" 

"What? Oh, yeah, sorry," Anakin stepped forward with an apologetic smile at the flight pilot who had been trying to get to the boxed juices behind him. And as he stepped forward, his eyes still on Kae and the woman who looked like his Aunt, both women turned to look at him. After an awkward moment, Anakin briefly waved his hand at Kae and offered a smile before heading to the table where his friends and newfound sister were waiting for him. 

"Who is that talking to Kae?" he asked as he slid in next to Poe. 

Poe turned around to check out the answer for Anakin and nodded as he turned back around and reached for some bread to pick up the rest of the gravy on the plate in front of him. "That's Mara Jade." 

Anakin couldn't help ignoring his food for a moment to look around again. He'd thought it looked like her, and seeing as how it wasn't the first time he'd found someone here that he'd known at home, it wasn't a terrible surprise on one hand. But on the other she hadn't been mentioned. There had been no mention of Luke being married. No mention of Mara Jade, and of course, Anakin realized - he hadn't really asked. Maybe the next thing he really needed to sit down and do with his mother was to have a sort of twenty-questions where he just asked her everything he could think of about home so she could respond as to whether or not such things existed here. 

He picked up his own fork, and pushed his questions outward. "Is she here with the Resistance?" 

"She's a friend of Leia's," Poe responded. "She's not technically Resistance. But she provides us with information sometimes and apparently that got her clearance today. Or that could be because Kae is with her. Why? You know her?" 

Anakin shrugged, but in this particular instance there didn't seem to be any reason not to mention her relationship to his Uncle at home. "Yeah, I trained with her. She's a Jedi Master... she's married to my Uncle actually. I mean obviously not her," he nodded his head towards the door where Kae and Mara were standing even as he turned his attention to the food in front of him. "I thought it was her when I saw her, but I hadn't heard her name yet from anyone." 

"Is she with Luke Skywalker here?" Finn looked at Rey with this question as if he expected her to have the answers. 

"I don't know," Rey said with a shake of her head. "I remember her vaguely, very vaguely, from when I was little, but Luke didn't mention her at all." 

Kaydel Ko was looking at Mara and Kae thoughtfully. "I don't know of anything, but to be fair, my family mostly knew General Organa, not Luke Skywalker. 

"Rey was just telling us about Luke a bit, actually," Poe offered before he washed down his cereal with what appeared to be a cup of very strong caf. 

"Yeah, just a bit, but no big secrets," Rey shrugged. "He was the one that asked me to return here." 

Anakin took a sip of the caf on his own tray and placed his curiosity about Mara Jade to the side so that he could focus on what Rey was saying about his Uncle. . "Why didn't he come himself?" 

"The short version is that he's afraid he'll put the Resistance in greater danger if he is here. Kylo Ren - Mom said you'd met him - he wants Luke, as does his master, Snoke. If they thought they could hit the Resistance and get Luke then their efforts would be more concentrated." 

"And as long as Luke is elsewhere then their efforts remain divided." Anakin nodded, swallowing the disappointment of still not being able to see his Uncle. Yes, he had a sister here, and one that seemed to be ready to accept him as such - which would have to do for the moment. Add to this that he suspected she knew where Luke was, it was a conversation they could have more privately. But in the meantime he just looked over at her. "So why did _you_ come then?" 

Rey glanced at the table as if she was trying to decide if she should talk about it here, or defer. 

"I can leave, if you guys need to talk," Kaydel Ko offered as she sat down her coffee. 

"We all can, if you and Anakin just want to talk," Poe offered.

"No, it's okay," Rey shook her head waving for them to stay. "It's just - Luke has been having visions with Anakin. He wasn't sure what they meant at first. Thought perhaps they were visions about Ben, somehow… they didn't make any sense to him. But then when Chewie picked up the subspace message on the _Falcon_ from Mom, then things fell together, and he decided it was worth Chewie and I coming back to meet Anakin. You're a fully trained Jedi, aren't you?" 

"I'm -" Anakin hesitated. Everyone kept assuming that and saying that he was made him feel like an imposter and a bit as if he was claiming too much too soon. "Technically I was an apprentice at home. I had been for a number of years, and I've got a lot of experience including battle experience. I don't know at what point you consider yourself to be fully-trained, and the further into it I get, the more I doubt I'll ever _feel_ fully-trained, but considering that," he decided he wasn't certain he really wanted to bring up the fact that their shared brother had apparently laid waste to whatever Jedi Order there was, so he shrugged. "Yeah, I guess it's an adequate descriptor." 

Rey watched him for a moment, serious, but as he finished her cheeks dimpled. "Well you're more fully-trained than anyone else at this table, including me. So let's go with it." 

"But you are training?" Anakin persisted.

"Luke's training me, yeah," she looked down at the food on her plate for a moment, and Anakin got a sense of uncertainty that fell off of her. And he wondered in a moment if she'd wanted to train or not… and maybe not. 

"But if you aren't trained fully -" 

"I'd still be there training except -"

"Me." 

Rey nodded. "Luke seemed to think that this was something that had the potential to be important." 

Anakin could feel everyone looking at him and he shook his head. "Don't ask me. I still don't really know how I got here. The Force, maybe. But it feels ridiculous to subscribe importance to it." 

"Is that how the Force works?" Finn wrinkled up his nose and put his fork down rather quickly. "Cause I've got to confess it confuses the hell out of me." 

"Sometimes it does me too," Anakin confessed, taking the question seriously and wrapping his fingers around the mug of caf. "Theoretically we know that the Force is in every single living thing, right?" 

"It binds the whole galaxy together," Rey nodded. "Is that like the first spill they always give you? Cause I got it from Maz, and then again from Luke." 

"Pretty certain it's Jedi training 101," Anakin laughed with a lopsided grin settling on his face despite his turning back to the question. "So if it binds the galaxy, what if it binds galax _ies_? Dimensions? Different universes?" 

"If you accept the fact that there are multi-universes in the first place, that doesn't seem implausible," Kaydel Ko was watching him thoughtfully. 

"Normally I'd say that it seems a bit mad," Poe shrugged. "But in this case, the simplest explanation - that you were telling the truth - felt like the least far-fetched, because if you weren't telling the truth about this other world… that's the craziest infiltration story I've ever heard anyone try to pull off." 

Finn chuckled, and Kaydel Ko nodded as she reached for the tea mug. 

"You have siblings don't you? In the universe you come from?" Rey peered at him. 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "You look a lot like my sister Jaina. Not exactly, there are these little differences I can see more clearly now that it's light, and I'm looking for them - she doesn't have dimples like yours, for instance, but at first glance the resemblance was uncanny." 

"And a brother?"

"Yeah, Jacen is Jaina's twin. They're both about a year and a half older than me." 

"If the Force brought you here," Finn startled them all by speaking again, having clearly been mulling over their earlier topic in silence for a moment. "Then there has to be a reason, right? It didn't just pull you from your Universe into this one for the heck of it." 

Anakin didn't know how to answer this. The creeping suspicions that the state he was in when he'd been pulled into this Universe, and the vague memories of the final moments he remembered in the other, had led him to lay awake more than once considering what everyone at home might have thought. Had he died at home and been pulled here? That didn't seem likely to be the average thing that happened when you died - when Master Yoda had talked to his Uncle about becoming one with the Force, Anakin usually considered that to mean something less concrete than landing in another Universe and even if he had considered it just _landing_ in another Universe, it wouldn't have been one like this one, still at war, and still utterly out of balance with the Force. Instead it would have been someplace where balance just _was_ … but maybe that was equally crazy an idea. Truthfully, Anakin had never really thought about it in any significant way because he just hadn't had time, and besides philosophizing and asking questions had always felt like Jacen's job description. Right now he almost wished his brother was here to answer this question.

"I don't know," he shrugged, leaving his suspicions mostly unvoiced. They didn't feel like anything that would matter if there were some reason he was supposed to be here. 

Anakin could feel Rey's eyes on him as he looked down to the food in front of him. Poe asked Finn something and Finn responded, and the two were off talking about popular holos and availability within the First Order - the short version seemed to be that mostly they weren't - with Kaydel Ko chiming in, and Rey asking questions, because it seemed they weren't terribly accessible on Jakku either. Anakin's mind was half on the conversation, half on the question of what had brought him here in the first place, until he was finally brought back into the conversation by a familiar title. 

"What about _The Smuggler from Ord Mantell_?" 

Finn shook his head slowly. 

"Oh, I've got that one," Kaydel Ko enthused. "It's such a classic. You should all come over and watch it. Tonight maybe?"

"They have that one where you're from, Anakin?" Poe put his hands on the edge of his tray. 

"Yeah," Anakin grinned. "It's one of my Dad's favorites. Well, I mean, we have one called that, and it was one of my Dad's favorites. He used to say it was one of the few classic holos that actually put some effort into making the smuggler's life realistic." 

"Yeah, I could totally see Solo liking that one. How large are your quarters, Kaydel Ko?"

"Well, we could fit most all of us," she looked down the table. 

"Hmm, I was thinking of asking Jess and Zayna too." 

"We could watch on the _Falcon_ ," Rey offered. "But maybe tomorrow night, cause tonight Mom wants Anakin and I to have dinner with her." 

"She does?" Anakin left the hand holding his cup of caf halfway between his lips and the table at this pronouncement. "She didn't say anything to me."

"Yet," Rey grinned. "But I told her I'd mention it if I saw you. I'm seeing you, so I've mentioned it." 

"Right. Okay. All right," Anakin hoped that this was a good sign. 

"So tomorrow night on the _Falcon_ then?" Finn encouraged them back to the smuggler holo. "I've never seen this, and I feel like every fifth inside joke Dameron over here makes is from it." 

"I love the _Smuggler of Ord Mantell_ ," Poe shook his head. "Can't help it - it's just brilliant storytelling." 

"And the fact that Merk Pan is so good looking probably doesn't have anything to do with it either," Kaydel Ko's eyes were twinkling. 

"What can I say? He's a good looking man," Poe laughed as he stood up. "All right then, it's settled. Tomorrow night, _Falcon_ , a date with a fictional smuggler, and I'll tell Jess and Zayna. And…" he glanced as his crono. "I'd best get on my shift. See you guys around." 

"Guess that's me too," Kaydel Ko sighed. "I'll see you all tomorrow night if not before." 

"Have a good day," Rey offered her friend brightly as she pushed her own tray back to mark herself finished. "Do you have to leave too?" She asked Finn. 

"Yeah, in about ten, but I've got a couple minutes here." 

"What about you, Anakin?" 

"They've pulled me in on a mission, but they haven't given me regular duties as such. I spent most of the time before I went on that mission just reading and watching old holos to try to get a feeling of this galaxy's history." 

Rey nodded. "I guess it's a little disorienting being here. Is it very different?" 

"It is, and it isn't. Which, is also disorienting. But it's getting better. Things throw me a little less frequently, although it still is startling every time I find someone that should know me that doesn't. In a way I'm glad you're not named Jaina - that'd be more difficult to get used to I think." 

"Yeah, I can imagine. Mom didn't say a lot, but I feel like it's been weird for her too. And having me back. But hopefully it's good weird." 

"What happened?" 

"The short version? I was kidnapped by a former Imperial agent, Force sensitive - they had plans that were interrupted, but not before they'd dropped me with a colleague on Jakku with most of my memories suppressed behind walls. At least, that's what we've been able to piece together. Some of it was a suspected theory before hand, and Luke and I were able to uncover a few memories that felt as if we could confirm it as likely." 

"Jaina and Jacen and I were kidnapped several times when we were kids," Anakin said softly. "Just never permanently. And Ben?" 

"Ben wasn't kidnapped, but from everything Luke says, it was really hard on him after I was. And Mom and Dad too, of course. I guess everything spiraled." 

There was a guilt heavy in that statement, and it was something Anakin recognized completely, and he slid into Poe's chair so that he was straight across from her instead of to the side. He slid his hand forward to cover one of Rey's. "Hey. Not your fault," he reminded softly, as he noticed Finn's hand hovering just behind Rey's elbow. 

"I didn't say I thought it was," Rey protested with a frown. 

"You've got the Force, and a sibling bond may still be a thing when we aren't actually one hundred percent siblings, and also I've got a gold medal in 'beating myself up for events that happened to me, but that I did the best I could with'. Trust me. I know that look all too well," Anakin looked back at her.

Rey looked up at him, but after a moment she looked down with the briefest of nods. "It's just been a lot remembering things, and little bits and pieces, but some things are still blank." 

Anakin nodded. "A lot of that will come back if you want it." 

"I want it to come back, but I also don't sometimes." 

"You don't have to force it," Finn said. "I mean, Force or no, you don't have to try to force things to come back into your mind. It's okay if you don't want it to and you leave it there."

"He's right," Anakin nodded. "And it's okay to take your time with it. Remembering may not be a perfect cure." 

"I don't think there's a cure for a life that was stolen from you." 

"Pretty certain that's true," Finn agreed, pushing his own tray back. 

Anakin looked between them both, wondering what had been stolen from Finn, but it was a question he could ask him later. Instead he just looked back at Rey feeling as if in a weird way they were sitting in similar positions. And while he couldn't pretend to know exactly what she'd lived through, he felt like he got what she was saying. "No, I don't think there is. There's just moving forward and creating a new one." 

"Exactly," Rey said softly. 

"About that," he finished off the last of his food and nodded towards her. "You have a lightsaber - have you started training with it?" 

"Yeah, I'm pretty good actually," she grinned. "I didn't realize I was practicing with my staff this entire time for lightsaber use, but apparently it's been helpful." 

Anakin echoed her grin back. "Then you want to come down to the gym and show me what you can do? It's been - way too long since I had a decent sparring partner." 

"Man, I almost wish I could watch this," Finn looked between them. "But they're going to want me to be at my post, so I'll catch up with you two later." 

"We'll practice and let you come down and watch sometime when you're off shift," Anakin offered Finn a smile. 

"That's good enough for me," Finn looked over at Rey as if he were going to say something else, and then smacked his lips together and headed for the door. 

"You ready to get your ass whipped?" Anakin turned his attention to Rey with a full grin. 

"Are you kidding?" Rey shook her head with a laugh. "Someone is going to end on the floor, but it isn't going to be me. Let's go!" 

Perhaps it was easier than asking his sister a hundred questions about who she had been and what had happened to her, and maybe it was a cop out, or maybe it was precisely what they both needed - the ability to focus in on an activity together as a way to learn each other's abilities and histories. 

Over warm-up stretches, and between meditative stances, Anakin found out about Rey's life on Jakku, her love of flying, even when she'd never had the chance to do so, and how she'd stumbled across Han Solo, or Han Solo had stumbled across her. Throwing her a basic wooden staff, and picking up one for himself, Anakin figured out that she was really good -- a couple of times the hard way -- but he found himself not necessarily able to pick out forms from her moves. Her experience had been practical, and it had been a good teacher, but her muscle memory caught her up a couple of times where Anakin's use of the Force pulled him ahead. 

"Have you done any working together with someone else to defeat an opponent?" he asked as they pulled out of a remote training, both of them with red cheeks and a slight sheen from the activity. 

"I don't know, I don't think so," Rey shrugged and stepped across for some water to drink. She looked down at the canteen in her hand and shook her head. "Sometimes I still can't believe water is so easy to get to. I feel like I need to save it, hold onto it." 

"I spent time on Tatooine when I was a kid," Anakin straightened his shoulders back. "I can't imagine how much an entire life of desert planet would affect your interest in water." 

"That's where Uncle Luke grew up isn't it?"

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "My best friend at home, Tahiri. She came from Tatooine too. She grew up there with the Sand People, but when she was nine she came to the Jedi Academy to train. We arrived around the same time and we did all our training together. She had to go back to complete a ritual, and I went with her. We did it together the two of us. I pretty much decided I never wanted to have to choose to live on a desert planet at that point. And to be fair, I don't think she wanted to go back either." 

"She was your best friend, huh?" 

Anakin glanced up, his cheeks reddening a bit, but he said only: "I miss her. I have no idea if she's here, like Mara, or if she was never born in this universe, like me. And if she was, I mean, if she wasn't found by the Jedi then is she still on Tatooine? Or if she did get found by Uncle Luke," he stopped, they both knew where that would end up. "And anyway, it wouldn't be the same. She wouldn't know me, so I've mostly tried not to think about it much." 

Rey nodded and put the water bottle down. "It's weird getting to know a family you've never known really." 

Anakin looked up and nodded, a sympathetic smile crossing his lips. "Yeah, it is." 

"So this working with someone else thing…" 

"Right, okay, so it's through the Force, and you can reach out to someone and work together. We probably don't want to start with the fighting though - maybe just some meditation. If you're up for it?" 

"Let's give it a try."

So for the next hour Anakin took her through what appeared on the surface to be far less related to fighting or lightsaber combat, but it was the sort of thing that he knew could be helpful. There was a sense that he had that they would need to fight together in the future, and while neither of them had been brave enough to bring up the fights that he knew they had each had with Kylo Ren, eventually that would come to surface, and if the man was Rey's brother, Anakin's by the proxy of being in this Universe instead of his own, the chances seemed likely that they would face him again.

When they finally parted, they'd spent most of the day together and Anakin left the gym area feeling better than he had for a while. It didn't hurt that he knew they were going to meet again for dinner with Leia, which felt like a good omen. 

This second dinner was less awkward than the first mostly because of Rey who seemed to fill awkward pauses with little pieces about Luke and the training she'd done with him. Anakin found himself opening up about the training on Yavin IV, and he and Rey sharing similarities in expressions Luke would use. Finding that those similarities existed was somehow comforting, and perhaps was for Leia too, who seemed to relax a bit more than she had the first time she had eaten with Anakin - although perhaps that was as much about the fact that she had begun to get to know him a bit as it was about having Rey here as well. 

As the dinner came to a close, Rey turned to Anakin. "Did you build your own lightsaber then?" 

"Yeah," he nodded, handing his hilt over to Rey for her to take a closer look at. "It's actually… when I was a boy I found Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber on one of the missions we went on. I used that idea as a lot of the base - there are pieces of Kenobi's lightsaber that I reused in mine," he added simply. "I don't know. It felt like an appropriate homage somehow." 

He felt his mother's eyes on him, but when he looked at her, she'd dropped her gaze to the lightsaber. 

"I guess Ben Kenobi is an important part of this family in any universe," she said quietly. 

Anakin nodded as Rey returned the lightsaber to him. "Yeah. I mean, he was Uncle Luke's first mentor. As well as his connection to Grandfather. I think that's a given." 

Anakin couldn't help but feel the chill as Leia pulled back at the mention of Anakin Skywalker, and he returned the lightsaber to his belt with some resignation. They finished, he and Rey taking dishes away to be cleared, and Rey took her leave to go check the _Falcon_ before she went to sleep. This left Anakin alone with Leia again for the first time since their outburst in the hall and as the door closed behind Rey, Anakin couldn't help the urge to follow immediately after her, but instead he swallowed his anxiety and he turned back to his mom. 

"What happened?" 

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?" 

"With Kylo Ren? ...With dad?" 

For a moment, Anakin was certain he wasn't going to get an answer. But an instant before he could say anything she started speaking. "It was Snoke - I could feel him hone in on Ben early," Leia frowned and leaned forward on the table in front of her. "He's behind the First Order, but he's also Force Sensitive. He reached out to Ben. I should have said something to Han... to Luke - earlier than I did. I see that now, but I didn't know what to say, and I didn't realize just how much Ben was being influenced. That Ben could access the Force so easily, was unnerving enough. I wanted things to be all right. Luke had turned out alright. With the Republic being rebuilt my focus at times had to be elsewhere, and things held together until sometime after Breha's kidnapping. Han and I fought more then, and Ben was sensitive to it, perhaps he blamed himself although he shouldn't have. A few years after was when I sent Ben to Luke, thinking that Luke could help to train him, but I think that only made everything worse." 

Anakin sat back. As a young boy he'd been touched by the Emperor's clone before he'd even been born, and then again after. In both cases it had been his mother who had understood and sought to protect him. And as he listened it hit him like he hadn't exactly realized before. No Leia wasn't wearing a lightsaber, but his mother at home didn't always either, even if most of the times in recent months she had because of the war. And his mother hadn't been trained exactly - she hadn't had the skills to push the Emperor's clone back on her own, but he knew she'd been part of it. "You're not trained as a Jedi," he stated quietly.

"No," Leia said, and there was a tightness around her mouth. "I had other things that were more important." 

"But you've not done any training?" Anakin persisted. "You always got interrupted at home, but you still learned with Uncle Luke when you could -"

"My focus was elsewhere." 

"But you're so strong in the Force why wouldn't -"

"Because I didn't want to!"

Anakin blinked at the sharpness in her tone reminding him that he was pushing and despite the fact that she had allowed him to ask, the relationship they were forging was rocky at best. He stopped the questions, not much less confused than he'd been a moment or two before.

At home his mother had always wanted to be a Jedi - at least so far as Anakin could remember. That she had not gone through the full training at the praxeum was a result of her other duties, her focus on the New Republic, and even her family, but never had she said she wouldn't be a Jedi, and while her training had been different, in many ways Anakin had considered her one even without the full knowledge of the Force that he or his Uncle or his siblings might have. She had wanted to learn when she could, she had been open to the conversations, and Anakin could remember more than one quiet conversation in his childhood between his mother and his Uncle while he sat on the floor tinkering with some building toy or another. She had wanted to know more about the Force as she had the opportunity to do so. While most of the rest of the galaxy had not considered her a Jedi Anakin saw it differently. 

"Okay," he said finally. There was an awkward silence between them for a moment until he instead focused on the woman in front of him. This was someone who could have been a very powerful Jedi and who could have had a great deal of understanding of the Force and who had chosen not to - and Anakin had no idea why and likely wouldn't understand that for a long time if ever. Perhaps that would tell him something about his brother, perhaps not - but either way it was time to move on. She might be his mother, but he had no interest in repeating earlier arguments if he could keep from it.

"So there's only Uncle Luke. And Rey, and me. I've just been trying to figure out what happened and why. We have more than two Jedi at home." 

Leia's look didn't seem exactly welcoming, but she didn't counter anything he said and Anakin stifled his frustration. He had a brother in this galaxy. A brother who idolized their grandfather. A brother who had fallen so far to the Dark Side that he had killed his own father. One who seemed nothing like his brother Jacen.

But Anakin couldn't sell himself that lie. Ben might seem nothing like Jacen, Ben might seem nothing like Anakin himself, but the Dark Side had been there for both Anakin and Jacen and Anakin knew it. He knew that while Jacen feared it for Anakin, he perhaps equally for himself. And Jaina? Well, they had all struggled with the legacy they'd been gifted, fought it, come face-to-face with it, both in the light, and in the quiet places of their own hearts. Right or wrong choices mattered and he'd learned that lesson from Master Ikrit along time before and been reminded of it before Master Ikrit died. 

Whatever his determination had been he wasn't certain he had arrived as a light side Jedi so certainly as he would have liked. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the past year had been recognizing that he would continue to have to make choices and that those choices could so easily skew dark. He wasn't afraid of the Dark, but he couldn't refuse to acknowledge it. And here in this galaxy, his dream had a face and a name -- even if neither belonged to him. 

_It will burn you_ , the old Jedi Master had said. Would this if he let it?

"Why would I have named you Anakin?" 

Leia's voice pulled him from his thoughts and he looked over to catch his Mom's gaze. Something in it held him for a moment. There had been so many nights the name had felt like a curse and even if he'd come to grips with it he couldn't ignore the way it had shaped him. At times he'd been frustrated by his mother naming him that, but the woman in front of him hadn't. There was no need to protect the feelings of a woman who was not the one sitting in front of him and perhaps every need to be honest.

"I've asked myself that question more than once," he admitted. "I ask it every time I dream about becoming my grandfather. Every time I am reminded of what he did become. I know what it's like to be haunted by the Dark Side and followed by what came before and I don't think I'll ever lose that -- but I have made peace with it." 

Anakin considered a boy who had been haunted by it from birth, a boy who had lost the sibling that Anakin had counted on growing up, a boy who had stepped into darkness and made choices that Anakin couldn't exactly fathom even as he knew that those choices probably weren't so far away as he would like. His name reminded him of that every day and while at times it had been a burden at the moment he realized it had been a gift in its own way.

He leaned forward, his gaze intent on his mother. "I never asked you why, exactly, but I think you named me Anakin because you made peace with your father, and because you were trying to acknowledge the good in that man and give it life again."

"Bail Organa was my father." Leia's words felt like a worn piece of cloth nearly frayed through. 

Anakin didn't contradict her. He had heard enough stories of Bail and Breha Organa over the years to have no desire to displace their importance to his mother's life. They had given her love and Anakin knew that. He knew that Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, the man whose name he carried, had given his mother nothing but heartache and grief. That man was the reason Anakin had never met Bail or Breha himself, or visited Alderaan in anything other than holo images, and museum displays on Coruscant. "He was. But so was Anakin Skywalker." 

When Leia didn't respond Anakin wondered if he should leave, but the quiet didn't have the same feel as earlier silence between them. He no longer felt like a child at a Senatorial Dinner Function, but something braver and bolder. He didn't have all of the answers, but he had some, which meant that the current silence felt more familial, or maybe it was just that he was beginning to piece together the history and life of the familiar face in front of him. 

"I don't know if I ever was able to really see the good in him." Leia admitted. 

"It's a lot to expect anyone to be able to do." Anakin said quietly, realizing as he considered Kylo Ren whom he didn't really know except as the man that killed his father, that he was struggling to do so as well. 

"I can't help but see the good in Ben," her voice felt tightly controlled, the words possibly a response to his own thoughts, and Anakin looked up. "I told Han to go after him. I thought if his father went, perhaps - he could do what Luke hadn't been able to accomplish. It's my fault. If I hadn't asked Han…" 

"He might still have tried," Anakin retorted with certainty. "Dad cares about family more than he ever lets on about. Even when family disappoints him. And Ben is family. Whatever he's become he's still family. And we still have to live with who he is." 

"Sometimes I wonder if this is my punishment for avoiding Vader," Leia said quietly. "I wanted to put it behind me. Ben took - so much from me - but I cannot help but want him to come home still. Yet I can't imagine naming one of my children after Vader, even the him that was a Jedi before. I could see Luke doing it, but I can't see myself doing it. And you're a Jedi - like Luke. I must have come to some peace with Vader in this other life."

Anakin shook his head. "Before I was born there was a clone of the Emperor, and he tried to reach out in the Force and corrupt me. I don't know if he would have succeeded in another lifetime. It's earlier than I really have memories of - just… impressions. You were going to name me Han Solo Jr," he raised an eyebrow and gave a shrug. "I could have lived with that, but I don't regret that you named me after Grandfather, even if it's not been an easy weight to carry. But wanting to know everything I could about him? It didn't mean becoming what he became; instead it meant trying to be what he could have become."

For a moment there was silence between the two of them and Anakin breathed out, his words coming out strangely loud in the room between them. "I think it still means that. Every day. Even here. I'll always carry my Grandfather's legacy, but it doesn't have to bury me under it. It doesn't have to bury any of us." 

"Even Ben?" Leia's voice was calm, the total control only demonstrating how much hope she still carried.

Anakin might hate what this brother represented as a living version of his worst nightmare. But if Ben was this, it also made Anakin all too aware that he and Ben were two sides of the same coin, both caught living with coming to terms with a grandfather's legacy, but choosing very different ways of doing so.

Anakin looked up at his mother and felt the truth of the words strumming through him stronger than the anger and the frustration.

" _Especially_ Ben. Mom, we're going to bring him home."

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work & series came from a sentence in the book _Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith_ : "Perhaps we are never really free from the ones who came before us; we simply make our peace with the ways they haunt us still". It stuck in my head when this plot bunny came to take up residence, and it stuck as a working title when I started, and then it stayed, so due credit should be given where credit is due. 
> 
> I think way too much about Solo kids in any universe, and if you relate to that, or just want writing updates as I push forward into taking all my rambly ideas for Part Two into something more refined, please feel free to follow me on [tumblr](http://jedihafren.tumblr.com/).


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